To think school lunches are expensive

[SEsofty]

So eldest child has gone into year three so I therefore need to pay for school lunch as previously free.

I have a relatively generous food budget of about £100 per week for five all meals, and to include nappies for youngest and the occasional bottle of wine.

So just under three pounds per person per day.

School lunch is £2.50 per day. Therefore most of the budget gone and the small portion size means that child still needs a full meal in the evening.

I am thinking of doing packed lunch instead but everyone else seems to have school lunches.

I am just wondering how everyone else affords it and whether I’m out of kilter

"It's £4-£5 for a sandwich, piece of fruit and a drink here. "

Wow! That is a lot!

This is secondary school, UK. DC have a card on which the limit is £5 or £6 per day. This is set by the catering company and cannot be lowered by parents.

It's absolutely ridiculous.

The only decent, good value thing they used to do was deemed too unhealthy, so they changed it.

It was a bacon roll, with 2-3 slices of grilled bacon in a small, crusty roll, and cost £1.10. It was filling and good value, and comforting on a cold day.

Now it costs £2.50, and only has 1 slice of bacon in it. Now it's healthier, it costs more (for less)??

They do a small cookie or a small slice of brownie for 80p each, but anything healthy, or 'proper food' is expensive. I wouldn't mind so much if the profit went back into the school and benefitted the children, but it doesn't.

My dd is in year 3 so have to pay for dinners now but she is a fussy madam and only tends to have school meals on a Friday as it's fish day.

Ours cost £2 and don't have a starter like some schools on here but have a "main" and the option of a jacket potato on mon/wed/fri or sandwich and soup tue/thu.

We get the menu a few months in advance so can decide which meals my dd likes.
Today she has had a school meal as it's salmon fish fingers which she likes but next week the only thing she will eat will be Wednesday and her usual fish Friday.

The problem I have is varying the packed lunches as they tend to get a bit repetitive.
Like the idea of the pp who makes pasta pots. If you're reading can I ask how you do them please?

School lunches aren't a thing where I grew up. Children take a packed lunch or money to buy lunch at the canteen. Nothing wrong with it. Preferable for younger children imo. We don't have the option of sending in a packed lunch at my sons school, I'm quite glad to be honest. One less thing to think about. If it was optional though I might do packed lunches though because he is very fussy and I worry that he won't have enough to eat.

It's £2.50 at my daughters school.

There is no way I will spend £50 just on one family members lunches. I pay for 4-5 a month and she picks what she wants (usually pizza Friday or roast Wednesday) and has packed lunches the rest of the time.

I agree with pp that school dinners should not be relied on as the main meal sadly it’s not always a choice for people it’s often a necessity.

Ours are £2.40 and nearly all the children have them.

They get bread and butter, a hot main like lasagne or chicken pie (or a vegetarian equivalent) with a choice of veges or salad, then a choice of a hot dessert like crumble and custard or fruit, then cheese and biscuits.

I think it is a perfectly adequate main meal of the day for most children, provided the child likes the meal (there is no choice), but the portion sizes of the hot main are the same whether you are a tiny 4 year old or a near-adult sized 11 year old. The older children are encouraged to have more bread and cheese and biscuits which they have plenty of because the smaller children don't eat them.

DD who is 8 and not a fussy eater is fine with a light meal in the evening, something like scrambled eggs on toast or a sandwich, so we make a saving there. She also gets a snack at after-school club and a snack at morning break, so she is actually eating five times a day.

I don't think uou shoild do a budget per person in your family. That's not fair on the child who then has fifty p a day left.

So five days of 2.50 is 12.50. As such your family food budget is now 87. 50 for the week if you chose to do school lunches. The cost is the cost.

Just to be clear I don’t do a per person budget, that was purely to illustrate that school lunches take a significant chunk of the budget. Here you have to pay half termly so cannot chop and change days of the week otherwise would do that.

And yes families make all sorts of plans and assumptions before having children. For me this is just another example of costs being higher than expected and income less. Eg over the last five years have had no wage increases, public sector austerity, inflation has been almost ten per cent over five years. And many costs eg council tax are higher than inflation.

Our paid school lunches (not UK) are £6:50 a day, I then found out DC were just eating a sandwich most days. I now give them a packed lunch, even though I don't like making packed lunches much.

At our primary school lunch is £2.38. Three children for the week would be £35.70 for the week, half of our entire food budget for a tiny portion of food that isn’t good quality. Not to mention, the company who cater for the school are incapable of ensuring their meals are dairy free or even offering an alternative.

From my experience in the UK, schools hate you chop and changing between "school dinner" and packed lunches. My observation, for what it's worth, is that most children started out on school dinners, but the parents eventually got wise about the reality of quality of the food, versus the printed menu, and each successive year, more and more went over to packed lunches, just to make sure that their child actually ate something!

It is because most school dinners are about making a profit for a company. If you took your kids to a restaurant and paid the amount you pay for school dinners, you would get crap.

The thing is, of course they are more expensive than cooking the food yourself or providing a packed lunch - there are costs involved in providing the meals such as staff costs, equipment, bills etc......those all have to be included in the price you pay, and it's daft to say 'I can cook that meal for 75p so why are they charging £2'. It's the same as in a restuarant, except the school are charging far less beyond the cost of ingredients than a restaurant.

No-one has to pay to have dinners. It is everyone's choice. No if you can't afford them or think the portion size is too small or your children don't like what's offered, go for the packed lunch option. Easy!

The trouble with school dinners is that they will never be exactly what every child likes or the right size for all. And 'eating out' which is what school lunches effectively are, because someone has to be paid to source the food, cook it, serve it and pay all the costs involved in that, will cost more than doing it yourself.....you pay for the luxury of someone else doing the work.

Personally I don't particularly think a hot meal at lunchtime is a vital necessity even in winter. Most adults only eat a hot meal in the evening. So go for a packed lunch if you want to, and aim to stop it becoming a tedious cheese or ham sandwich every single day.

If you can't face making packed lunches (and it's not most people's favoured occupation each evening or morning) or need the convenience of not having to cook in the evening, then you have to accept the price, food offered and portion size.