Parents complaining about this in school?

[WillowAnn]

DC are not properly watched whilst eating at dinner time and allowed to just go outside whenever they’re finished. So they could basically have no dinner or just a very small amount and then go out to play. Staff don’t advise them to eat more or say they can’t go out until they’ve eaten. Parents are complaining. Any thoughts?

Ours monitor but don’t make them eat anything. In fact before they started reception the teacher on the home visit asked if they are a big or small eater so they knew if someone wasn’t eating who normally would.

I was once stunned to receive a call from the teacher (I’d never had one for anything before) and it was to tell me DD hadn’t touched her shepherd's pie so best not to order that again!

That seemed beyond the call of duty!

@Holu when state schools get the same income as private schools then they can have a staff member on each table

Is there anything that parents don't expect a teacher to be responsible for nowadays?

I think this is fine. Appetites vary greatly from child to child and even for a child day to day. If they’ve moved more than usual or had a smaller breakfast than usual they’ll eat more for example.

My DD has always eaten more than both my DS at comparable ages.

This was my experience but I remember being force fed in year 1 as well. By a teacher I already had issues with. The supervision in years 3-6 was slightly looser but they still policed what we ate. We'd be sent back if we didn't eat enough of their horrible food. Especially me, the pickiest picky eater. They introduced a clean plate sticker chart. It was for my class but it was actually for me and my mum then sort of backed it up with her own approach. I felt so pressurised. I don't think it was conducive to good eating habits. I don't think I have good eating habits. This was the start of me being out of touch with ny natural appetite.

Should junior school lunches be supervised? Yes. Should food intake be policed? I understand why an eye is kept on it but I personally would rather my child came out a bit hungry and ready for a small snack than that they acutely dreaded lunch time every single day. I still don't eat the foods that psychotic demented hell bitch (I had other issues with her as well as the food) forced into me. I can't and I won't.

My DDs first primary school pretty much forced them to eat everything. So no. It caused a lot of issues !!!!!

What do you mean “thoughts”? What is your skin in this game, what do you think and why?

630 kids, 6 midday supervisors, one hall seating 120, one hour yr1-6 lunchbreak. (reception start 15 min early)

Mid day split 3 inside, 2 outside, one roving emergency/medical.

That was fun with the new reception intake of 90 kids in September... some were still sitting there after 1hr15.

It is a rolling lunch. When there is room in the hall for another lot the bell rings and they get shouted in.
Final bell rung 3 times for those who missed all the other bells...

Then 2 mid day supervisors clean and put away the tables and clean the hall. So there are 4 watching 630kids.

Who exactly should be "making sure" kids eat?

Our school keeps a vague eye over what's going on, but only in the respect that of someone really isn't eating a particular thing that will be fed back to parents so we don't order or provide it again.

But no, they're not going to make them eat a certain amount. Eat until they're full and move on, isn't that what they should be taught?

This was my life at school in the late 50s and early 60s.

Mid-day supervisors don't do it now, fortunately, and teachers (as mentioned above) don't do lunch duty as a rule. I was a Reception teacher and only went in in at the beginning of the year to see the new children settled but didn't force anyone to eat anything.

There should be a fixed lunchtime. If not slower eaters run out following the faster easters and a ravenous all afternoon. Play is too tempting, they need a fixed eating period. It has nothing to do with "force feeding" ffs!

The primary school where I worked had over 400 pupils - you couldn't physically fit that many children at chairs and tables in the hall. The youngest went in first but could leave under supervision of MDS when they'd finished. The older children had playtime first and a short time after eating.

This. As if school staff aren't responsible for enough things, now you expect them to do this as well. When did it become ok for parents to abdicate all responsibility and hand it to schools.

You can't force children to sit for an additional 10 / 20 / 30 minutes, just to accomodate those who eat more slowly. Children need to be outside and allowed to play, and there often isn't enough space in the hall for children to sit around waiting for their friends / classmates to eat a little more. Additionally, making children stay inside when they're finished just means you have a table full of children messing about or chatting, because they're bored. Which is going to be even more of a distraction to those who haven't finished eating.

From a safeguarding point of view, this attitude is so dangerous. I actually agree with others that schools can’t make kids eat lunch, but I see this again and again on schools threads. We have to bear in mind that of course kids exaggerate and even sometimes invent things, but we can’t have a go-to of just deciding everything your child tells you cannot be trusted. We all know where that ends up.

My DS is a lanky teenager now and since he started school at infants, has never eaten lunch at school. I used to give him a small packed lunch but he refused to eat it, so I’ve stopped giving him stuff to take. He does have money on him if he changes his mind, but never spends it.

What are teachers supposed to do in that situation? Force feed them? Kids won’t die from not eating at lunchtime. 😂

He will happily eat a small lunch at home at weekends and holidays.

What are YOUR thoughts, OP? Strange that you would post, not offer any opinion and then not comment on anyone's ideas...almost as if you were trying to generate content for a website....

The only child of mine who was watched whilst he ate at school and I had daily reports of what he had eaten sent home was my younger son.
He has anaphylaxis and in his case it really was a matter of safety.

As ever, schools can't win either way. I used to cover lunchtimes when we were short of MDSAs and honestly, you'll get parents who moan that we haven't ensured their child has eaten enough and others who moan that their child ate the whole lunch and then didn't have time to go out to play!

Some lunchboxes were huge! Way more than I'd eat and yet some children were told by their parent/carer to eat it all. Poor things!
You then get the children who eat painfully slowly but are hungry enough to want to eat it all. So what should we do? Tell them they can't eat it all because otherwise they won't get any fresh air, or allow them to sit for ages nibbling like a snail?

We sometimes suggested to send a packed lunch in if the child didn't like the school dinners but that obviously didn't usually go down too well because the school dinners are free. (Infant school)

At my school, school dinner children would have to put their hand up before they could eat pudding and we'd see how they'd got on with the main part. Sometimes we'd make a fun game of trying to encourage to eat a bit more veg or whatever but they were never forced!
Similarly, packed lunch children were encouraged to eat some of their sandwich or whatever before they ate their crisps or chocolate bar etc. Surely that's what your average parent would do at home?

There's a middle ground between policing every morsel of food eaten and encouraging children to eat enough food so they aren't tired for the afternoon learning session.

But as with most aspects of school, we simply can't please all of the parents all of the time!

Wouldn’t want to go back to my school days in the 70s where there was a ‘naughty table’ for kids who didn’t finish their lunch. They’d sit there crying and missing out on playtime with a plate of cold congealed slop in front of them.

I'm still traumatised from being in first primary school. The little boy sat opposite me clearly didn't feel well and was being told he had to eat him packed lunch, vomited all over the table. So no, I think as others have said they need to eat to theor appetite.

My primary school regularly kept me in for the whole of the lunch break for not eating my disgusting lunches. This was back in the day when grey lumpy mashed potato, peanuts on salad or mint custard was a thing.

I remember having to sit on the same table as the head master to make sure I ate it, which I never did or stupidly would get caught throwing it under the table.

My mum marched up to the school one day to complain about it, but the school never budged.

I would expect schools to gently encourage children to eat, but would not want children being kept inside until they'd finished

It depends how old they are, learning to eat/ decide what you need and when full is an important life skill. I think chats at home about fuelling the body etc would help if parents concerned their child is not eating enough in a rush to play. If I still worked in school and parents expressed concerns id probably drop it in to the conversation with the class i.e. it's important to eat at lunch before you play as body needs energy etc but wouldn't monitor unless very young.

It should be left to the kids (and parents should talk to kids and find what they ate that day, was it enough etc).
In my DS primary, the main concern seemed to be getting them in and out of the lunch hall as fast as they could. Not enough space for everyone so allotted time slots. This included qeueing and hand wash time. Plenty of hurrying them along. Lots of food ending life in the bin.
Packed lunches often returned home part eaten (ran out of time) and very hungry kids. This was an improvement on the school dinners provided by a franchise and with a lovely looking menu but in reality the quality of the meat was pet food. The portions were suitable for toddlers and food was undercooked (part frozen) or overcooked.
Many parents have (and still complain). HT does a cursory check , occasionally parents are invited in to share lunch (and kids state lunch never looks like this on normal days) was treated to raw chips though so they. Didn’t quite cover up 🤭
My DC and friends often revisit memories of these (not) lovely lunchtimes with much laughter.

There are 300 children eating lunch in my school hall. Five staff. With all the will in the work, they wouldn't be able to monitor what every child was eating! Have you ever been in a school hall at lunch time OP?? 😬🤯😆