To think school dinners are taking the mick now?

[QuietRiver]

Just signed up here after lurking for ages so sorry if I do this wrong!

DS1 is in year 8 and has school dinners most days. They’ve just put the prices up AGAIN and it’s £3.20 a day now. For that he gets a slice of pizza and a cookie or a wrap and a juice. He’s always starving when he gets home and raids the fridge so I end up feeding him twice anyway.

Packed lunches would work out cheaper but he says everyone at school does dinners and I’m being tight if I make him take a sandwich.

It’s not even that the food is nice - he says the chips are soggy and the queues are massive so he barely gets time to eat.

AIBU to just send him with packed lunch from now on even if he complains? Or is this just the price of having a teen these days?

Make him take drink and snack from home; the money will go further than. Ours is £5 a day!

In our area council policy (very few primary schools are in academies round here) is that portions should be the same size for every child, from Reception through to Year 6. So the portions are fine for the littlest years but small for the older ones. Also the council insists that "its a hot meal NOT a main meal".

IN fairness to schools costs have gone up massively. The three biggest costs for a school kitchen are food, energy and salaries (mainly minimum wage) and every single one of them has gone up.

Also do take what your child says with a pinch of salt. Menus are easy to find online. I'd be very surprised if pizza is the only option.

Most schools have servals options, it’s just the kids tend to prefer the grab and go options that aren’t as filling or as good value. At my school a meal deal can be a plated lunch, which would be something like pizza, wedges, a vegetable and then a cookie/flapjack/cake and a drink all for 3:20. Good value I think.

Mine take snacks in their bag and fruit so it pads out lunch if they need it.

Our school has two queues: hot 'proper' meal and one for sandwiches (pizza too on Fridays)

It's £2.30 for a meal deal plus a quid for toast/teacake/croissant at first break if they want.

Get him to choose and pack some extras to take with him.

Ours have the choice of a proper meal (curry, sausage and mash) or a 'snack bar' which is burgers/pizza/cookies.
My son never gets a proper meal as there's not enough time, he finds the crap snack bar choices easier.

I am outraged on your behalf that he is eating such terrible junk every day. Assuming there must be salad bars and vegetables and proper meals?? If not then, I would be talking to the school governors. He shouldn’t he eating that kind of rubbish every day op.

Ours is £5 a day. But she gets a pack up as we can’t afford that. There are proper options though. Full meals like katsu curry, plus snacks like pizza and paninis. Sounds like your son is choosing the crap option?
Id send him with a packed lunch personally

You’re not getting the full story here OP. It’s probably he doesn’t want the other food on offer as it’s ‘not cool’ to eat ‘proper food’. Mine always said the food was rubbish and no choices - turned out they had many choices, just nothing mine would eat, or was seen to be ‘not cool’ 🤷‍♀️ You can’t force him to take a packed lunch, but I’d be definitely talking to him about it further.

That sounds pretty poor.

My ds' school gives a choice of a hot meat dish, a hot veggie dish, a salad or sandwiches. Today he had beef pie, veggies and mash, and a banana. £3.20 per day.

I think I'd send your ds with a flask of hot soup and a wholemeal roll every day. If the school lunch looks ok he can choose to eat that, or eat both, or just the soup. Home made soup costs very little.

Yes, let him dictate to his parents, start as you mean to go on! It's only his word that 'none' of his mates take a packed lunch.

My DD's school lunches are really awful. All totally UPF. Not very much of it. The vegetarian choices are lip service to being an option because 90% of them are so bad no child ever selects them (lentils in a tomato sauce 🤮🤮🤮🤮).

My DD does like the cakes, but the pretence of them being healthy eating is just a bare faced lie. And I draw the line at paying over £3 for 1/2 of a baked potato and a cake that costs about 40p to make (I know, staffing costs, but...).

I guess your ambition has to be to make the packed lunch more appealing than the expensive, slow crap on offer?

That's what he's choosing to eat, I doubt the school only have the same 2 options every single day.

I'd just do pack lunches.

Honestly I can't do a decent packed lunch for £3.20 a day!
Can't you see exactly what he's buying on an app and the prices of things?

DS2 and DD are in year 10 & 8 respectively they can get a full healthy meal for £2.50 or crap for £3.50
It's priced like that to encourage them to make the right decisions when it comes to food!

And they never come home hungry.

DS1 who's now in college would have happily eaten a wrap, cookie and juice at school and then he'd come home hungry. But the rules in our house were you don't eat after school until tea time, if you've made a shit food choice at lunchtime that's on you!
After a week he was making much better choices and wasn't coming home hungry either!

yes it works out so expensive. My son just started YR7 and was spending nearly £5 a day! I don’t even eat that much as an adult. He now takes packed lunch and on a Friday/Monday has school dinners. I try to encourage him to get the £2.60 meal deal and no snacks or drinks. Radnor flavoured water is £1.30 per bottle! I just got 6 for £2 in my Ocado shop. He’s happy with the compromise. Maybe you could do the same with your son

Packed lunch doesn't need to be boring ham sandwiches, he might encourage others to take a packed lunch too. My daughter is primary school but taking a flask with soups, pasta, noodles etc. Teenage boys in my experience usually love a big pasta or a huge sandwich.

That really is expensive! A meal deal at my eldest son’s high school is £2.40 for a main a dessert and a drink! I don’t know how prices can vary so much. They must be making at least 50% on each meal.

Seriously no one who takes a packed lunch to secondary school admits to taking one. I work in a school lunch hall, the amount of packed lunches we find chucked in bins is amazing. They just either don't eat or get their mates to buy them stuff!

You should be able to get a weekly menu. Post it here, or discuss more filling healthy options with your son?

I agree

Expensive junk, empty calories, seems to be the trendy choice.

My dd has no vegetables in her school food except the tomato sauce on pasta!

At home she eats brilliantly and so I just pile on the veg when she is home.

FWIW, I agree with you, I imagine it isn't a lot of food.

Costs are going up everywhere unfortunately. Even ignoring the increase in food costs, the NI increase on the staff is something the school is expected to pay but hasn't had an increase in funding to cover. I imagine the low cost (to them) meals are offsetting the higher cost meals, assuming he had the option of pizza or something else. I don't know.

What I do know is our county's school food service is shutting at the end of this school year, which should give an indication as to how dire the situation is. We've already moved to a private company and we try our best, but can only do so much.

Maybe send him in with snacks to supplement the meal? So he's still buying something with his mates but can eat something else as well.

@MissScarletInTheBallroom Interesting. In the 80s I spent a school year as an English Language Assistant in a french school. I was very impressed by the quality and price. The costs were tiered. Senior teachers paid the highest price, other teachers paid less, and pupils paid least. I paid the same as the surveillants, which was 7 francs. For that, a 3 course meal with bread. Starter, main course and cheese. All very nice. However there was no choice. Take it or leave it.

Yes it's still quite similar to that. The price you pay (on a sliding scale between the minimum and maximum price) depends on your household income.

The starter is always vegetarian and then for the main course there's a choice between the meat or fish option and the vegetarian option. They don't cater specifically for religious dietary requirements so I don't know if Muslim children eat the vegetarian option every day or whether their parents can select the vegetarian or meat/fish option depending on what it is that day.

Other than vegetarian or meat/fish there is no choice and the children get what they're given.

I can't help but think that if you give children the choice and one of the choices is always junk food, a lot of kids will just eat junk food every day.

I hear you. Dd just started Yr7. She either picks a sausage roll and cookie or some sort of wrap and fruit pot - about £3.50 a day . It's crap.

The hot food queue takes too long and they only get 30 mins, so she never goes for this option.

Very interesting, thanks.