School toast

[Fairycake89]

Today I forgot to pay my 6 year olds toast money which they have at morning break. They gave every single child a slice of toast besides my daughter.

I have never forgotten before. Could they not have just put a note in her book bag as a reminder? Or sent a text.

You pay online for the term so I have paid it now (20p per day) including todays… even though she didn’t get any.

Should primary schools be more understanding? It’s not the child’s fault, it was mine.

Is it fair to single them out ? Toast for you, toast for you, NO toast for you , toast for you….

When I was a child we went 4/5 hours without food no problem. Why is not even one child out of a whole class full capable of doing so anymore?

Sorry, might be a bonkers question but can you not give her a slice of toast before she goes to school? 20p for slice of bread is ridiculous.

I don't think it's mean, I think it's just their system.

They have to go exactly by what is in the system.

• Children may have allergies or are not meant to have toast for whatever reason (e.g. if overweight) and might lie and say they are allowed it when the parents don't want them to have it. There's no way of checking this apart from whether it's on the system or not for them to have it.
• Like one poster pointed out, this probably happens every day and it adds up. She pointed out it added up to hundreds when it was left to staff's discretion and they couldn't fund it.

I can understand why it appears cruel and horrible, but I also think there's quite solid reasons behind it tbh. They have that system in place to protect the children and protect the school.

@mindutopia this was a snack not a meal. Schools/teachers take a hit on meals but can’t cover everything. Become a governor, look at the school budgets, there will be many debts for parents not paying for meals. Debts schools can’t afford to cover

Maybe all the posters who are outraged on here could set up hardship funds at schools to help cover these debts.

Posters also querying the cost of the toast. I assume it isn’t a volunteer sorting it out. I assume some poor soul has to toast hundreds of slices of bread everyday. Assume they use something more substantial than a 2 slice toaster

It actually breaks my heart. I cannot imagine ever letting a child in my class go without while everyone else had. We regularly are buying food/socks/knickers/stationary etc. for our class. That's just how it is, you don't know which kids are getting breakfast and which aren't. It's not about money either, plenty of well off families are too chaotic or struggling in others way too much to manage a proper breakfast. Every service that supports families have been stripped and school staff know they have a moral obligation to bridge the gaps.

Plus the social side of everyone sitting together and eating is so important. Not every child has the space for a dining table or parents with the time or inclination to sit at it. I can't believe anyone working in a school wouldn't just know all this. In my opinion offering breakfast to all children is absolutely essential these days.

It’s not breakfast.

I can only speak for the schools that I've been to as a governor - but I can very much guarantee you that none of them were buying branded Hovis bread 😅 Asda/Aldi own bread is fine - and that's around 70p for their nicer bread, think their basic loaves are even cheaper.

Absolutely you need to add on butter and electricity. Butter is bought in large quantities from Costco etc and the bread isn't exactly slathered in the stuff. A home toaster costs 9p on average to run for 10 minutes - that could do two lots of 6 slices of toast at least. Don't know how much the school ones cost but it will probably be even less per slice. Let's round it up though and say 1p per slice to toast.

Google tells me there are 20-24 slices of bread in an average loaf. Let's assume only 20 slices - that's 3.5p per slice. Google says 5g of butter per slice - Asda own brand butter is £1.90 per kg which is less than a penny per slice.

So the total is 3.5p for the bread, 1p electricity to toast, and 1p for the butter - that's 5.5p per slice of toast. And bear in mind that's all rounded up - schools are amazing at finding the cheapest options to save money so the chances are that it will be much less.

So - out of 20p cost, that's around 15p profit per slice. At least.

I don't begrudge the schools that at all, but it's why there really would be no hardship in giving out even a few extra slices here and there.

Actually, I've just googled Asda own brand bread and you can get a loaf for 39p. So that's 2p a slice, assuming only 20 slices per loaf - taking the total down to 3.5p max per slice.

I think it's appalling!

I would be ashamed to humiliate and disappoint a child for the cost of a slice of toast. One of our local schools runs a breakfast club that the headmistress pays for herself - there's no way in God's good creation that she would have allowed that!

TBH I would hope that most schools would at least give out the toast until they had checked with the parent that there had not been an oversight (like yours) or a problem at home (eg dad has kicked mam out and they are in a homeless shelter).

I think you were very good to pay for the toast your Didn't get a chance to eat. I would have made a point of NOT paying for it.

It’s not breakfast though, it was a snack. If the pupil was entitled to free breakfast or lunch she would have received that. Similarly, most schools I’m aware of will sub lunch to none free school meal pupils who don’t have money for that day got whatever reason. This was an optional snack - it’s not the same.

@NotQuiteUsual but there will be children who don’t have the toast by choice. Not all children like toast, assume other children bring in other snacks.

OP’s child did have breakfast, this was s snack.

It’s really not fair that school staff are expected to put their hands in their pockets to bridge the funding gap in schools or to pay for children who come from low income families or to cover for parents like OP who forgot to pay for a snack

this is on you

We have too many parents that rely on us to feed their children anyway and fall into arrears on their school dinner accounts. The school can't afford this, and allowing meals with no money on the account was finally stopped after a parent ran up an almost £100 bill with clearly no intention of paying it. (Not the only one, but the most outrageous recently.)

Yep it's a bit tight. I can only say that schools are under pressure, especially with money etc. However...... I would have probably sneaked in a slice of toast for the child..... a whole loaf costs about 70p so a fair bit of profit is made, unless of course it had butter etc. 😆 😂 😆 but yes, tight.

To all those appalled: schools aren't little cottage industries full of Miss Honey types and kind grans in the kitchen making toast. They are professional organisations, usually cashless.
A list will be printed off a spreadsheet/SIMS of who has toast that day, and put in the register or sent to the classroom with that precise amount of slices. Probably a TA will supervise the distribution of it while the teacher goes on duty/does lesson prep/has 5 minutes to themselves.
There's no time or margin for queries.
It's a parents' job to be on the ball with this.

Yeah I agree they probably didn’t single your daughter out but assumed you’d opted out for whatever reason.

Teachers do not have a moral obligation to feed every child in their class from their own pocket.

I'm wondering if people think that the teacher is sat in the classroom with a loaf of Warbutons and a two slice toaster toasting away for a queue of kids. Or there's a massive pile of uneaten toast being swept into the bin by the teacher as the hungry kid looks on.

Chances are, there was only the correct allocation of toast and there wasn't any to give to the kid because their parents hadn't paid.

It feels like the OP is just annoyed that they messed up and their child was upset with them and is looking to pass the blame to the school.

One of our local schools runs a breakfast club that the headmistress pays for herself

It's up to her if she wants to be a mug though isn't it, it shouldn't be the standard expectation for all schools and teachers.

She isn't a "mug". She is compassionate.

We are in one of the most deprived areas of the country - even before Covid and the cost of living crisis there was massively high unemployment (because there are no jobs, not because people are too arrogant to work for minimum wage - the few jobs there are are almost all zero hours contracts).

If you would let a child sit hungry for the sake of a slice of toast, then you are the sort of person who let little Daniel Pelka starve to death because it just wasn't your responsibility to give him anything to eat. He was missed by teachers, social workers - everybody was too effing callous to give a kid a mouthful of food and a listening ear.

For all the posters who are saying it's just a piece of toast, why couldn't the school have managed for one day, the flip side is that it's just a piece of toast - why is there such a fuss over a child missing it for one day! It's not like the whole class had a Christmas party without her. You forgot, she reminded you, you remembered to pay for the next time. Not a huge deal.

For every parent who is struggling and can't afford to buy food, there will also be other parents who decide to have a lie in rather than provide breakfast or decide they can't be bothered to make it as they know the school staff will cover. When it becomes an expectation that staff dip into their pockets for things like food and resources the government some parents will take advantage and the impact of the government education funding cuts will continue to placed on schools staffs shoulders.

I mean this kindly, but fuck off. Teachers who can't afford to/don't want to pay for food out of their own pockets, let alone run an entire breakfast club from their own pockets are not complicit in the tragic deaths of children like DP, nor are teachers who get given a list of names with the exact number of slices of toast and don't take off another child to give to someone who isn't on the list (for what could be numerous reasons). Your comment is hyperbolic and offensive. I'm not a teacher by the way but i despise the expectation that teachers should pay for x, y or z and if they don't it's harmful to the children. No. It's a job, and not one where one's ability to be a great teacher should be measured by the amount of spare cash they have.

If you would let a child sit hungry for the sake of a slice of toast, then you are the sort of person who let little Daniel Pelka starve to death

The absolute state of this comment.

Vile.

The people who let Daniel starve to death were his mother and her partner

Because when you're little, everyone else being given something but you can feel like a big deal. Especially when maybe you don't fully understand why.

As I said above, a piece of toast with butter would have cost 3-5p to buy/make and the cost of giving the child one could easily have been absorbed from the profits made from selling the other pieces of toast.

So if a school has a list on SIMS (or whatever) that states 120 pupils out of 150 have had toast paid for on that particular day, so someone then sorts out 120 rounds of toast and distributes to relevant classes ready for snack time. Bearing in mind break time will be about 15 minutes and children will probably now be milling around outside in the playground, how easy is it to then locate the children who should have had toast but their parent forgot to pay for it that day.