To not understand the threshold for free school meals?

[AllTheBloodyWashing]

I am a lone parent to 11 year old twins who are starting secondary school this week.
I work part time and earn under £16000pa
and get a top-of universal credit, I applied for free school meals for my dc but it has come back and I have been declined.

I’m honestly so upset and really don’t know how I’m going to cope with this extra payment each week for my dc to eat at school, I’m barely scraping by as it is and have just used my last £20 to top-up their dinner cards so they can at least have something for the next two days.

so aibu to not really get the threshold for it, when so many families are really struggling at the moment.

It’s bloody ridiculous. When I was a student (37.5 hours a week) and on CTC, we qualified for FSM. Once I was shoved onto UC, halfway through my degree, it stopped. 3DC all in primary at the time.

I found packed lunches eye wateringly expensive compared to school dinners, and fucking time consuming when I was already out of the house at 7:30am and not home till 6:15pm Mon-Fri. It wasn’t just the needing to buy bread, ham whatever every 2 days, but finding the bloody time to do it.

Admittedly I have ADHD but even medicated, I find it ridiculous to do.

I found packed lunches eye wateringly expensive compared to school dinners, and fucking time consuming when I was already out of the house at 7:30am and not home till 6:15pm Mon-Fri. It wasn’t just the needing to buy bread, ham whatever every 2 days, but finding the bloody time to do it.

I have three kids and take packed lunches myself-I have never had to buy bread and ham every two days. It works out massively cheaper than school dinners here! I make the next day’s sandwiches whilst I’m doing the dinner-it takes minutes.

Ah yes sorry! Of course its not like you set up the system. Just had no idea how ridiculous the system was.

Someone I know was entitled to FSM when she was out of work and claiming UC.

6 months later she managed to land a great contract earning 6figs - still entitled to FSM.

It's ridiculous!

No it isn’t. Children can be in receipt of Pupil Premium Funding (under EVER 6- ie if they have been eligible for FSM at one point in the past 6 years) without actually being in receipt of FSM at that moment in time due to to parents’ circumstances changing and affecting their eligibility. Primary school teacher and pupil premium lead here.

I found packed lunches eye wateringly expensive compared to school dinners, and fucking time consuming when I was already out of the house at 7:30am and not home till 6:15pm Mon-Fri. It wasn’t just the needing to buy bread, ham whatever every 2 days, but finding the bloody time to do it.

I don't know how on earth you found packed lunches more expensive.

You dont need to shop every couple of days either, sandwich stuff lasts a week in the fridge!

Do you have a disability that affects your executive functioning?

Are you a lone parent with no ex or family around?

Do you also have to do a lot of outside reading/research/lab prep/exam revision on top of your working hours?

And when you’ve got 4 people eating toast for breakfast plus taking sandwiches, it’s easy to get a through a loaf within 24-48 hours.

One of my DC is dairy intolerant so has to have separate everything on top.

Thanks that helps put it into perspective for me. I have just googled and the top hit looks like some sort of government statistic: 22.5% of pupils are eligible for free school meals.

That's loads, I worry for these children in the coming winter. I hope they get heating allowance or something.

I don’t know the threshold but I am a teacher and had a year 7 tutor group last year. It is a pain in the arse but don’t put all of the money on at the start of the week. They get carried away with it not being like primary school and spend a fortune at break/lunch on the first day. We had so many parents put a weeks worth of money on and it was blown the first few days by having a massive meal every break and lunch and buying bits for friends because they think they have all of the money in the world.

I would suggest for the first couple of weeks just putting a daily amount on until they are in the habit of how much to spend

This is only because of the transitional protection though, under normal circumstances she wouldn’t continue to be eligible for FSM, although would still receive PP.

it’s absolutely shite, if you’re on legacy benefits the threshold is 15,600 but if you’re on uc is 7,400

Well, it slapped an extra £40 a week onto my food bill, and meant I had to cook when I got home because at wrap around care, guess what they got fed? Sandwiches/beans on toast/cheese on toast. Which they didn’t want as they’d had that for lunch. When they were having school dinners, they’d eat at wrap around care, then have cereal at home.

And I’ve never had a packet of ham either a) lady a full week without stinking or b) last more than 3 days.

Unless they’re just being sent with a basic sandwich and bag of crisps, it’s easily more expensive than the £2.50 a day for school dinners.

Yes, I do have some of those things. I buy sufficient ham and bread for the week-it doesn’t go off in 5 days.

I get you clearly find it difficult, but I don’t understand how making packed lunches is ‘eye-wateringly’ expensive compared to buying daily school dinners for multiple children.

Kilo bag of pasta
Jar of pesto

• 3 lunches

Pack of wraps
Pack of ham
Pack of cheese (grated)

• 2 lunches (quesdillas)

Multipack of crisps
Bag of apples
Refillable water bottles
Multipack of cereal bars from Aldi

Under £10 for the lot, 10 packed lunches.

Where's the veg in that?

Have you ever had to raise 3 children whilst being a student? I had around £3000 more a year coming in as I did on benefits, but no housing benefit, so I had to pay the £700 rent myself, rather than the £200 top up I was paying before.

My childcare bill of £2400 a month wasn’t all covered by the childcare grant, either. I had to pay 20% of that myself.

Should I provide a full breakdown of my income and expenditure for those 3 years?

And I was already living in the cheapest area possible - meaning I had to catch 2 buses to Uni, which was £60 a month.

Example - dairy free yogurts - £2.50 for 4. Not a 99p pack of 12 from ASDA smart price. Small salad each every day. Different sandwich fillings because who wants to eat the same sandwich every day for weeks on end? Fruit. Whatever snack meets the ridiculous packed lunch rules whilst school dinner kids get cake for pudding.

Yeah if you don’t mind having malnourished kids for fucks sake.

I agree that packed lunches are a hell of a lot cheaper. Mine have sandwiches (one has ham the other jam), frube, peppers, cucumber, crisps, cheese and a biscuit. They have an apple at snack. Yeah they could prob be healthier but so could school meals. And they’re a lot less expensive. Mine are primary but will have to continue with packed lunches in secondary. They have school dinners once a week as a treat when it’s Friday and there are chips on the menu. I agree also that the fsm
threshold is ridiculously low.

I don’t understand op of it was your last 20 why not make them a packed lunches?

Would get bollocked for jam and biscuits at my DCs school.

This is where the system is totally broken. I had a year or two when I lost my job and had to get by freelancing and I qualified for FSM.

I got back on my feet and now earn way, way more, yet my dc still qualify. And there are people earning £12k a year who can’t get it. It’s insane. 🤯

@BernadetteRostankowskiWolowitz
im not trying to be a dick, but there’s no veg in that at all. My DN who stays with us 3 dpw and is in y1 gets FSM as standard but her lunches always have a min of 2 fruit and 2 veg offered.
to get the same nutritional value as a school lunch you’d have to pay way more than £10 for 10 lunches

@YellowPlumbob

What would you give them? (Genuine question)

Ah my kids school don’t seem to care as much. Can they not take anything at all unhealthy in your kids school? Mine must have fruit at snack time but are allowed a couple of treats in lunch box such as crisps or choc bar/biscuit. I don’t think they’d allow sweets though. My son won’t eat any other sandwich other than jam so I’d be screwed if he wasn’t allowed it!

Actually scratch my last comment I was just being a bit of a pedantic knob.