Head not allowing my DD school packed lunch

[peacockfeather11]

This is the first time I taking this up directly with the HT. DD says the food awful and bland, this was brought up last year with the HT by a group of parents and as usual the response was 'we will try a new menu'. It did work for a few weeks and then the standard dropped once again, by then the parents had given up.
Now again this year and same issue, I sent an email and was told they have a 'no packed lunch policy', I can't find this one their web site and no-one seems to think it exists and that a new menu will be introduced. DD is so hungry after school and being in Yr6 has more work but has lost her appetite since going back. She generally has a good appetite and will try anything but says the school food is making her sick.
I sent another mail before holidays and never got a response. I don't know what to do. Any suggestions?

I presume this is a private school.

They can do what they want and I think the general rule is if you don’t like it, leave!

School dinners are crap. Cheap wheat throughout - always white, little quality protein, very little fresh veg, rubbish puddings

@prh47bridge

A state-funded school cannot have a "no packed lunches" policy. Education Act 1996 section 512(5) requires maintained schools to provide facilities for the consumption of packed lunches. Whilst this only applies directly to maintained schools, academies are required to follow the relevant law by their funding agreements. Banning packed lunches is clearly contrary to this.

The head should read the "School food in England" advice for governing bodies published by the DfE last year. About halfway down p5 it says, "Facilities to eat the food that they bring to school must be provided free of charge for pupils not taking school meals. As a minimum these facilities should include accommodation, furniture and supervision so that pupils can eat food they have brought from home in a safe and social environment."

Excellent work there, as always, prh47bridge!

@prh47bridge that is fantastic - exactly what the op needs to know

State school & no packed lunches allowed? Are you sure? I’d contact the chair of governors immediately. My DC’s have packed lunch because I can’t afford school lunches. I make 2 nutritious packed lunches each day for £10 a week, with careful planning at Aldi. Many of their friends mums are single parents working as nurses, carers, supermarket cashiers etc & are in a similar financial position to me.
The idiot footballer asking for a £15 voucher per kid per week in the holidays is really sticking 2 fingers up to working single parents. But that’s another problem.
Whatever the reason that a child has to have packed lunch (fussy eater or unaffordable school lunches to low paid working parents) the school MUST allow them and make decent provision for children to eat them and tap water for them to drink.

The idiot footballer asking for a £15 voucher per kid per week in the holidays is really sticking 2 fingers up to working single parents. But that’s another problem.

In what way?

I would definitely not pay for meals after next half-term, with the information by @prh47bridge as evidence. I would log the contact you have made with the school, the Head’s refusal to arrange a COVID safe meeting ( such as online or by a phone) and send in packed lunches.

As an adult no work place can make me pay my own money to eat food work may insist I eat.

Who's paying for this food?

Ah there's more that hadn't loaded. Just don't pay, they can't force you to pay!

Having worked in school meals in the past I can confirm that they are tasteless slop often cooked by non qualified people who are working for minimum wage! Cheap cuts of meat and cheap fatty mince! It's all about doing it as cheaply as possible.

I find school lunch menus really unadventurous. They hardly encourage a child to eat well, do they?!

5 days a week on a 3 week rotating menu and always a pizza day, always a fish & chips day, always a meat & 2 veg type meal and then on other days things like sausages, gammon, brunch lunch, pies etc and every meal comes with some kind of bread roll & a stodgy
pudding option - Oh how gloriously healthy!! Or rather not.

Every school obviously needs to provide meals, especially for the vulnerable, but forcing every child to eat them is a huge over step in my opinion and they simply cannot argue that their offerings are healthier than a decent pack up.

You've had some good advice op in relation to the legal position. I'd stop paying and send her in with a healthy snack. No way would I be paying for stuff my child wouldn't eat!

I think I would go into the detail of it. Don't allow yourself to be flanneled. Put the ball firmly in the leadership court. Say you yourself would like to be given the opportunity to try some lunches to see if it feels as though your daughter is being fussy. Ask if they have an engagement panel made up of students, parents and staff who are invited to try the meals and to give constructive feedback on the menu. Say you realise taste is subjective, that's why a panel of 6 or 8 tasters would be best. Suggest a governor might like to have a week of trying the menu and feed back in s report which can be published on the school website.

And something more like the carrot to encourage: ask about the process and how the nutritional balance is decided upon. Suggest pupils design the menu and carry out surveys to see which dishes are popular. Ask what is the evidence that the school meal provider is the best value. Say you know there must be good reasons for the policy, but there doesn't seem to have been consultation and an initiative to bring parents on board with the choice. Let's get the kids involved now in a democratic exercise to teach them about entrepreneurship and the need to design your product to meet customer need. Make it clear that you feel that the lunch policy should be accessible to the usual scrutiny and usual persuasions of any policy: uniform, school trips, phones etc.

I think that this is not a topic which is an appropriate one for giving parents the brush off.

It's not like no jewellery, etc. It's a fundamental right not to be forced to eat anything you don't want to, or which disgusts you so much you can't eat it. Actually, I thought it was a safeguarding principle that no child should be forced to do something they don't want to do. If you haven't any other lunch option, you are being forced to do something you don't want to do - or faint with hunger. I don't think a school would feel as confident trying this with older teenagers.

The idiot footballer asking for a £15 voucher per kid per week in the holidays is really sticking 2 fingers up to working single parents. But that’s another problem.
Oh it’s you again .. get back under your bridge

@DrCoconut

Re a previous post. Please don't claim to need gluten free or any other health related diet when you don't. It's hard enough for people with genuine medical needs to be taken seriously as it is and the powers that be knowing that any claims to be coeliac/allergic/diabetic etc may well be bullshit to get what the person wants just makes it worse.

Absolutely this. As a coeliac I find these suggestions really offensive.

@ChocolateCherrybomb

"Eat this"

"I don't like'

"Eat it"

"It makes me feel sick"

"Eat it"

"I can bring my own food"

"Eat this vile food, I forbid you to eat anything else"

Now imagine that's an exchange between any two adults, perhaps husband and wife/boss and employee.

This strange notion seems to prevail, particularly on here, that children should be basically forced to eat crappy food they can not stand and it boggles my mind.

If an adult did it to another adult, it would be classed as abusive.

I admit, I may be projecting a little as I cannot eat anything I don't like. I have tried just to be polite but my throat involuntarily closes up and I throw up or choke. It's my idea of torture.

This!

My kids love their food and I cook them lots of different meals all from scratch. And yet despite being great eaters they both hate school dinners. They don't like mayonnaise or seafood and that's pretty much the only things they don't eat. But the school food apparently is awful. They say there's no flavours in the food. The pasta and sauce is just plain tomato, no herbs, no seasoning and just no flavour.

And if they opt for the packed lunch type meal (sandwich, fruit and diluting juice) it's horrible. The rolls are just awful. I've tried them. And the so called Ham? Not ham, it's some nasty tasting meat style thing. But most of the time the options are tuna or egg mayonnaise. Both of which mine hate. And the portions are tiny. They always come home hungry.

In the schools I worked in, the food was barely edible. I would never eat it. Broccoli sounds ok, until you see what can be done to it. Cottage pie would be a layer of grey sludge with bits of gristle in, topped with a lighter grey layer with bits of undercooked potato in. I can't believe there was any nutritional value left in it by the time the kids actually got to eat it. And hardly enough even for year 2, never mind year 6. Bland really doesn't cover it. I think most parents without be shocked if they saw what was being served up. If they served it in prisons there would be a riot.

Pick your battles, this is not it

What @Washimal said I’m not DSL but have level 1&2 safeguarding myself, it’s really not a safeguarding issue.

our school have outside food company, our food is prepared daily onsite fresh we have 4 different hot dinners and usually 3 puddings one of which is fruit and children have option to bring packed lunches, we not long started serving hot food which the children are happy about classroom carpets less happy as they all eat in their bubbles in class.

I also don’t think you can just pop in now, our school is firmly shut to parents you need to call and make an appointment can’t just wander in you if want to complain and I think it’s completely unreasonable to say your child has sensory issues and start using terms like that to get your own way when some children struggle terribly. Be honest, it’s far more appreciated.

She would have happily starved in front of a plate of food, fortunately cake and chocolate kept her out of hospital.

We had a similar problem when DD was a toddler. No matter what, she would not eat. She did eventually eat the high calorie sweet stuff we put in front of her but it was a battle. It took a year before she ate proper food but it was a trial and error to get to what she would eat easily and what she refused. Her weight was dangerously low and even with the high calorie foods, we also had to give a supplement.

We never found what the problem was, why she refused food, may have been some kind of intolerance or sensory thing, we never knew.

She’s 11 now and is a pretty good eater, will try loads of new stuff. I can’t believe people still peddle the “they will eat when they are hungry” bullshit.

Pick your battles, this is not it

This is absolutely it. If you are paying for lunches you should be getting something your child will eat. I remember having to sit in front of a slowly congealing lunch all afternoon once (in the early 70s) because what looked like a slice of pork with (lumpy, full of black bits) mashed potato and boiled to death cabbage was in fact a slice of revolting gilbbery fat. And I had never eaten something like that in my life and wasn't going to start then.

We had no choice. If you had school lunches, as most of us did, you queued up and said "yes please" or "no thank you" to the grumpy dinner ladies (and they were always ladies). And if you said "no" they put it on your plate anyway. And if it landed on your plate you had to eat it. I was often in trouble for saying "no" seeing the spoon coming towards my plate and pulling my plate away. "think of the starving African children" - it used to get on my tits. I almost never went up for pudding because again, if you got it you had to eat it. If you were in the queue, you got it. And if it was semolina i used to gag. So it was easier not to. And then get nagged for ages about wasting food...

No matter the reason (excuse) there really is no justification for a school to say "no packed lunches"

Haven’t read the full thread but I had this with dd secondary school in year 7 or 8.
Dd suffered with mental health and was on the verge of an eating disorder too. She didn’t eat at school as the food is bad and it sort of spiralled from there as she noticed she was losing weight. We had a letter from an a&e doctor saying she needs packed lunches to ensure she eats as was presenting with symptoms such as dizziness and poor concentration. She was also under CAMHS.
School wouldn’t budge. Still pisses me off now.

My daughter's are at secondary school and have to take packed lunches because there was very little food at school sandwich or a salad pot. Neither of them like those options (although apparently hot meals are being resumed after half term) but I think the school did this deliberately to try and encourage packed lunches.
I'm sure if one school can manage it they all can. It's not a safeguarding issue but it is mean.
Just tell the head you are not going to let your daughter go hungry and you'll be giving her a packed lunch. Surely they won't physically remove it? Especially if other parents do the same.

Re a previous post. Please don't claim to need gluten free or any other health related diet when you don't. It's hard enough for people with genuine medical needs to be taken seriously as it is and the powers that be knowing that any claims to be coeliac/allergic/diabetic etc may well be bullshit to get what the person wants just makes it worse.

At school this isn't an issue as a medical certificate needs to be provided.

@AhoyMeFarties

I'd leave it now. Honestly schools are juggling a lot at the moment , there is only so much they can do. Sometimes we have to suck it up and just deal with things

So a 10 year old child goes hungry?? Are you going to tell them 'to suck it up??'