to think the new free school meals for all KS1 children is a ridiculous idea?

[Flexibilityiskey]

I just don't see the rational behind it, when benefits are being cut to the bone, why give free school meals to people who don't need them? Yes it may benefit the odd family but there will be loads who just don't need free meals, and at what cost? My DS's school will have to build a new kitchen as they currently don't have the facility to provide hot meals. There must be loads of schools with similar issues. Add to that the cost of feeding all the children in KS1 for each school year, the cost must run into millions. Surely the money could be better spent being targeted at those who genuinely need it or am I missing something?

I think universal provision of free school meals is really important. I am often in schools during lunch times and I wouldn't feed my DS the majority of packed lunches that I see kids eating but I would be happy to let him eat majority of the school dinners. I work in schools in areas that are affluent as well as deprived and in my personal experience the average school dinner is better than the average packed lunch, regardless of area.

As someone mentioned up thread, this is a health initiative. The cost to the NHS of the effects of poor nutrition is untenable. Guaranteeing every child at least one nutritionally balanced meal a day is intended to save money in the long term. The levels of childhood obesity in this country are a national disgrace. Every child should be entitled to a decent meal at lunch time, regardless of their parents income.

If you feel that you can provide a better packed lunch than the school can provide, then you can continue to do that. No one is losing out here. The government should be investing more into encouraging good nutrition in schools, not less.

findesemaine - not sure if you are suggesting I am ridiculous or government assessment of packed lunches is??

Assuming the second, I am guessing they have a list of what constitutes healthy and processed carbs aren't on it. By the same token, if you sent in pasta salad, it wouldn't count unless it was wholemeal pasta.

My own kids, we have a white loaf occasionally, I am not absolute about food because I think that causes an issue, but usually we buy and eat wholemeal bread because I think it is healthier, and tbh, white sliced bread is just like a slice of sugar. If it is the main part of their lunch, I want the carbs do give them energy all afternoon, rather than a sugar carb high followed by being hungry again.

The logistics issue never arose because every school on our county has it's own kitchen (and it's a big county!). Some schools did staggered lunchtimes so everyone had enough time. And food doesn't run out because our county suppliers run a preordered three or four week menu so the children always get what they've ordered.

panda - our meals aren't bad, and the kids have to pre-order what they want, and then get a coloured card to take into lunch (so if you ordered the veggie option you hand in your green card and get served a veggie meal) The system isn't bad, but there are still days when they run out or get proportions wrong.

i am amazed that all your schools have kitchens. Here there are loads of village schools with no kitchens, and old victorian buildings which are hard to adapt.

As I said - i don't think many school dinners are overly great tbh. But I do think people tend to fret over the dessert aspect when in reality that isn't really that big an issue. The rest of it is the bigger issue, and portion size too

I disagree and have taken my own child off (paid for) school dinners due to the huge pudding portions (giant cookie, sponge and custard, sprinkle cake) and minimal protein in the dinners. The mains were actually quite good- had my child actually eaten them and not just eaten the rice and then the cookie.

There's no comparison with packed lunches as I don't put cake or yoghurts or any dessert in with it, just a sandwich, vegetables and some fruit (dried or juice)- so she can still have something when she gets in from school.

This move can't be described as a public health initiative because it doesn't consist of eating healthy food. Even if some minimal standards of food are met (and they must be minimal) that's no guarantee the child will eat say the curry with chicken (mine don't) and just eat the rice and pudding.

As for fruit or yog as an option, my children report these options are mostly gone when they get to the front, plus one can't resist the puddings, so it being an option is rather pointless given a much more tempting option is also presented.

Pudding twice a week, with three lots of fruit/yog would be fine for me and I would use them again, five lots of stodgy puddings a week is going to do nothing to solve childhood obesity.

I've seen the menu being offered to my dd2.

She is vegetarian. There are two days out of the ten when there won't actually be a vegetarian main meal offering. She can have a jacket potato, cheese & beans.

On the other days, she will be eating something involving cheese + pastry/bread base, with a potato accompaniment of some description & 'salad'.

I've taught for 15 years; I know what a school 'salad accompaniment' looks like - assuming you're near enough the front of the queue to get one. I'm also pretty familiar with school-quality grated cheese...& the things you can do to a potato that aren't technically chips but still involve chopping it up & dowsing it in salt & grease.

It's not actually inedible or toxic, any of it, but it's not great nutritionally, I can certainly do a better quality packed lunch, & it's a shocking waste of the school's teaching & learning budget.

I've agreed to let dd2 start with the lunches in September, mostly because dd2 rather fancies it & dh needs to believe that Nick Clegg is not a totally useless twat (because otherwise he would have to accept that I have been RIGHT for four years & that would never do ).

I shall be watching developments with interest - & forcefeeding an apple the second dd2 arrives home.

These are the health standards that school meals have to meet. They are quite detailed but this is a summary from gov.uk:

All food in schools must meet nutritional standards so that children have healthy, balanced diets.
This means there must be:

high-quality meat, poultry or oily fish
at least 2 portions of fruit and vegetables with every meal
bread, other cereals and potatoes

There can’t be:

fizzy drinks, crisps, chocolate or sweets in school meals and vending machines
more than 2 portions of deep-fried food a week

In my experience it's just not true that school meals aren't healthy but I do agree about the puddings and don't understand why they are offered every day.

Yes its not a healthy eating initiative - was processed nuggets, refined white bread, custard and sponge today. My packed lunches look saintly next to that crap - wholemeal seeded role with egg inside, mixed veg sticks with humus for dipping, water, apple and small lump of cheese

Sienna's - our school serves 200 meals. The menu is made up almost completely of highly refined white wheat, sugar and fat. The food is cooked early and sits around ages, so loses nutrients. There's not enough veg or unprocessed protein. Nuggets, chips are still firmly on the menu. The nutritional standards catering companies have to adhere to are very low

'2 portions of fruit & veg' = sweetcorn with main course (of enchilladas, so carb'n'cheese again) & the option of fresh fruit salad for dessert, OR broccoli offered with economy gristle bangers, powdered mash & granule gravy, followed by the option of fruit in jelly, though.

No more than 2 portions of deep-fried food means that the breaded chicken portions etc are quite often oven baked - better, I grant you.

& 'quality' meat, poultry, oily fish - hmmm. Gammon appears once over the fortnight, as does roast chicken, & a salmon fishcake. Otherwise, everything's mince-based - either a pie or a pasta dish. Served with Not Chips.

If my kid's school served crap like that I would complain. Plenty of schools serve decent school lunches and if some can they all can.
I feel really strongly about this. All Kids should get a good quality lunch everyday and universal provision is the only realistic way of ensuring that.

But I've checked the meals served at my dc's school, & the meals served at the school where I teach, against the guidelines, & they are totally compliant with them.

& to be fair, if you were at the head of the queue & motivated to make healthy choices, you could eat decently. Bit too much salt & everything fresh is a bit soggy, but still.

I know - I've done it as a teacher. I've shifted to packed lunches because it's both cheaper & healthier to pick at a tub of homemade leftovers, but you can pick a healthy lunch from what is on offer at the start of the lunch hour.

Try being six, vegetarian, liking puddings & arriving halfway through lunch service, though...you're going to be eating like Elvis, frankly.

But schools can, and many do, serve good quality meals.
If schools are serving crap for lunch parents should complain about it, whether they technically meet standards or not.

Processed chicken is not good quality protein and I actually haven't seen these for a while. I'm not saying that school meals are perfect. The cakey desserts every day are unnecessary and there's too much white bread but even the worst school dinner is infinitely better than the worst packed lunch (Monster munch and wagon wheel) I've seen. To read this thread you'd think that all packed lunches are made up of homemade hummus and vegetable sticks and quinoa salad. That is just not representative of your average packed lunch, not at the schools I go to anyway.

even the worst school dinner is infinitely better than the worst packed lunch (Monster munch and wagon wheel)

Not much to choose between them, I'd say.

School meals could be excellent, but overwhelmingly they are not. You need to go in at the end of lunch service, imagine yourself with a dietary restriction which takes out the 'headline' option & see what that leaves you with, before you can really judge a given school's provision.

The truism about 'no such thing as a free lunch' really does apply here.

www.theguardian.com/education/2014/may/20/free-school-meals-56k-give-children-sandwich

I'm prepared to give it a go. But I suspect that what we're actually doing is funnelling rather a lot of tax revenue into the pockets of dubious slop-purveyors, some of whom may well be chums of certain of our elected representatives, in order to provide poor quality food at the expense of providing teaching resources.

Since I'm reasonably solvent, if the food is of dreadful quality I'll return to providing packed lunches quite quickly. Many less affluent parents may not feel they have that option.

Yanbu, it makes my blood boil.They should have raised the threshold for FSM so that the working poor could access decent lunches in both ks1 and ks2. It is just absurd to give free meals to families who really don't need them when so many others have been forced to rely on food banks for their basic needs!

I'm all in favour of universal benefits like this in a society where everyone's basic needs are already catered for, but how can anyone justify giving to the rich when they are taking so much from the poor? I just don't get it. :(

They serve puddings every day because it's a cheap way of getting the calories in when the amount of protein they get is negligible(being expensive to provide).

Seeing as kids are supposed to eat what is it now 7 or 10 portions of fruit veg( with veg being preferable) the spoonful of sweetcorn,baked beans, or a floret of broccoli they get in reality is an absolute disgrace.

It's a health time bomb. All those kids eating humongous puddings daily, white highly refined wheat for their main course plus desert daily. Empty calories daily. It creates bad habits and a food culture that won't serve them well health wise.

Why aren't all the products wholewheat?

Wouldn't it have been easier just to ban crisps, chocolate etc from lunch boxes to improve the health of some children with unhealthy lunch boxes.

steppemum, sorry, it is definitely the government that I think ridiculous, not you!

My schools menu is 100% compliant with the guide lines but everything is still 100% unhealthy white wheat and sugar

I feel really strongly about this. All Kids should get a good quality lunch everyday and universal provision is the only realistic way of ensuring that

How? The company providing meals at dds school cant cope with the extra demand. School are looking for a new one. I doubt they are alone.

What usually happens with increased demand is that things become sourced from paces which factory farm really really cheap stuff. You saw what happens in America where more kids are on school dinners. And what farming practices go on as a result and the cheap shit that's provided.

And when plenty of you are already having kids being home ripped books from the 70s , tell me, when teachers/school staff have already explained they are having to sub the meals out of the school budget, how taking money away to feed kids who don't need it from already stretched funding for educational equipment is a good thing??

Just how?

And it requires more staff too. Who's paying the wages. Because increased demand means more staggered lunch times which means the TAs that supervise any he I the dinner hall and class took at same time.

The whole day needs re scheduling to ensure there's no pe at all in the afternoons as the halls won't he free

Why on earth are the school dinner guidelines so poor? Why isn't there more non processed protein and veg? Why isn't there a wider variety of carbs used? Why isn't their white wheat replaced by wholemeal in all main courses? Why aren't their puddings healthy? This new school meals thing was a chance to totally shake up the nations food and tackle lots of long term food- health related problems. The government have missed a huge opportunity.

And is this money really taken out of the schools budget? How much does my school cough up?

Retro pear that would make sense - cheap puddings mean they can give the calories very cheaply and can avoid buying more expensive protein. It's money saving to use naff white wheat instead of chicken.