School dinners v packed lunches

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My child’s school dinners cost £2.55 a day. Given the rising cost of food I’m not sure I can make him a big enough and nutritious enough packed lunch for the same cost. He is nearly 10 and eats almost as much as DH.
He has always had a packed lunch but I’m considering making the change to school dinners (plus it saves all the lunchbox faff!)
Am I just being lazy and unimaginative or is that reasonable?

Surely the cost of a packed lunch depends on what you decide to put in it? A ham salad sandwich, chopped up apple, and a bowl of salad and a couple of chocolate digestives will be less than £1. When you add processed stuff such pepperoni, fromage frais in a tube, cheese strings, crisps and expensive out of season fruit it will soon rack up.

Schools also have salad bars - ours has lots of different salads, bread, pasta salad, extra cheese etc. so that 1/2 jacket spud is soon turned into a filling and nutritious lunch.

Packed lunches for both DDs would cost me £24 a week. I can absolutely do it cheaper than that, with a range of fruit and veg and protein.

Agree that school dinners are too small for yr 5/6. Last winter I noticed a lot of children taking the food pots that keep things warm for several hours. Lots of homemade soups, Pasta dishes.

Even my tiny 8yo dd says the school dinner portions are not big enough. Ours cost £2 and I think packed lunches are cheaper, so we do that most of the time.

I find packed lunches way cheaper. Obviously if you pack them full of berries, smoothies, yo-yo bears, cake bars and baby bels then the cost will ramp up. But you can do a substantial sandwich and some basic sides for way less than £2.55. Slice of cheese, carrot/cucumber/tomato, a banana or easy peeler, a biscuit or two, an own brand yoghurt etc. A hard-boiled egg if I am feeling keen.

A meal deal is fine for an adult, so a primary school child doesn't need six different things in their lunch. If they are hungry, give them a bigger sandwich and make sure there's plenty of protein.

If he has the appetite of an adult male, school dinners really won't be enough for him.

YABU: school dinners are tiny and leave children hungry. They are exceedingly poor value for money and often not remotely nutrionally balanced. That's not for lack of effort or hard work by lunch time staff, they are fabulous, but the funding allocated for the food is shocking compared to what parents pay.

My children have packed lunches, I save a fortune. We make use of leftovers from dinner, a food flask, creativity and batch cooking. I spent today cooking things such as quiche, puff pastry pinwheels and savoury muffins to keep in the freezer and grab quickly in the evening/morning.

I found school dinners are just not enough for year 5/6.

As a former lunch supervisor the meals are just so small.

For example a roast would be a slice of meat, 2 small roast potatoes, a desert spoon of veg and a tiny Yorkshire pudding. Pudding would be a small yogurt or a piece of fruit or a small cake about an inch and half square.

When mine got to this age I changed them to packed lunch as they were just so hungry when they got out of school.

I used to do some lunch time supervision on top of my TA job. Portions really weren’t that big. I can remember the ‘home made pizza’ slices were sometimes a bit dry a couple of inches around the crust and they only got one slice! With old fashioned veg on the side but…

I agree the meals at the end of primary weren’t big. A number of the parents said the same. She asked me to get her a food flask, which she used in years 5 and 6. It was a bit of a faff admittedly but I kept portions of batch cooked meals and heated them up.

Aw my little one has just started school too and I hate doing packed lunches. Even worse she doesn't eat it mostly eats half a sandwich! What's even worse than that is in Scotland they get free school dinner up to and including primary 5 which I think is age 8/9.

If he likes the school dinner I wld be tempted to just go for that everyday! Ours is only £2.00 too for the older kids 10-12 that need to pay for them, bargain!

Exactly when you take into account the monthly cost of school meals and what it would cost to buy the things to make lunch it does work cheaper.

Ds 9 takes hot food to school 3 times a week pasta, sausage and mash, and curry and only likes menu on 2 days roast dinner day and fish day the portion sizes are very small and the older age groups eat last so half the time not enough food left too

Ours used to do pizza 2inch square and an inch thick , some plain pasta and a few peas.

Primary school dinners are tiny to be honest plus I have a fussy eater so primary school was a nightmare with constantly convincing her to try the school dinner option.

She is now in secondary school and is taking a small flask to school with hot pasta bake, chicken rice pilaf etc so eating much better, much lower costs and she is old enough (13) to heat and pack it herself! Bonus!

It's been a while since I've done primary packed lunches but I'm sure there will be some people more knowledgable than me along with cost saving ideas.

Dd's school want to finger print her if she wants school lunches. No amount of relief from faffing will make me allow this.

I think the portion size is a consideration. But they will be more convenient

Otherwise buy a decent hot food flask. Hot tomato pasta with veggies and meatballs. Special fried rice. Minestrone soups. Sausage and butter bean casserole. Would cost the same to make, and you can make enough for you to have for lunch, and freeze some for other easy lunches.

My secondary finger prints everyone for catering. They don’t actually have a copy of their prints, you do realise? The program will recognise a few points on their print is all. They can’t reverse engineer it and turn it into a fingerprint.

The school dinners at DC’s primary school aren’t great. I have helped at lunchtime and they remind me of plane food. They aren’t cooked on site as no kitchen so bought in, they vary from warm to cold. Small portions & a repetitive menu which gets smaller as costs increase. Dc1 & 2 are very grumpy on the occasions they have them as they are still hungry. 1/2 a jacket potato which is luke warm and the cheese doesn’t melt. Packed lunches all the way for my 4Dc. Packed lunch is more cost effective for 4dc though than £2.60 per day and they would still need a cooked dinner at night as they would be hungry.

I think it depends on the school. My daughter's school does different portion sizes for older kids and the food is cooked fresh on site. She also prefers having a hot lunch and sandwich tea rather than the other way around. I quite liked making her packed lunches for holiday clubs over summer but it was a novelty!

Her school don't allow packed lunches anyway but even if they did, I think we'd still plump for dinners.

School dinners are small plus DS' experience last year was as one of the older ones they got their dinner last... so there often was barely anything left, or what they had left was an odd mix of what should have been available. My youngest will probably have some school lunches this year (Year 4) but not bother by next year.

Having said that obviously it varies by school. Can he not just try a few days and find out what its like?

I’m not in the UK but I would do school dinners if the quality of food is good. Here school dinners are free from age 1-19 and it’s basically buffet style so they can eat as much as they want. Older children often have 3 different dinners go pick from and the food is often lovely and healthy (you would not on your life see chips or baked beans or processed food). Staff can usually eat for free too, some schools charge staff £2-3. Today we had boiled potatoes, oven baked fish in a lovely sauce and 8 different vegetables. Fruit for dessert.

I think it’s a pity UK don’t do the same, it’s guaranteed at least all children no matter parents income have a proper cooked meal every day. During covid (we had no lockdown but school for 17-year olds and up were digital some weeks, half of the pupils went to school for one week and the rest had digital classes with their teachers and the week after they swapped) the pupils studying from home could pick up free lunches from school or were given coupons for local restaurants to give them support.

I never understand the angst about packed lunches on Mumsnet ... my DS had almost the same lunch every day throughout his school life - one or two (large) ham rolls and a banana ... I never added snacks, treats, fizzy
drinks etc .... of course it's cheaper than a school lunch. And unless you are very lucky school lunches are really not very nutritious.

A couple of years ago we had some teachers from UK over to see how our school system works. They just could not seem to get over the free food, and took pictures every day of their food on their plates. 😂