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?

My children's school lunches were fabulous. Always healthy and nutritious, on crockery and with proper knives and forks. They were £4.50, 2004. When they were still at the state school lunches were £1.70 (I think) and the food provided was abysmal. They had packed lunches, it was more expensive.

£3.20 is nothing and I am shocked anyone thinks it's exorbitant. It's a push to get lunch for less than £6 or £7 in a cheap cafe nowadays.

If people want their children fed at lunchtime for a pittance, they have to accept the food will be crap. If people want good quality, nutritious food they have to pay the price. If they want it heavily subsidised there will be much higher taxes.

In my view parents are responsible for what their children eat and for paying for it.

So school dinners are £16 per week. Try this for three weeks.

Give him that as a budget so he can spend it all on school dinners or if he takes a packed lunch take £1 or £2 per day out of his budget.

After three weeks he will probably be taking a pack up.

Most schools are cashless so she would have to preload it onto his dinner anyway. Ours want it at least 48 hours before you try and spend it as well. Guess some have bounced.

Get him to take a packed lunch and keep him on school dinners, so he can eat his lunch in break or right after school when the hunger is real!

I was thinking this. My DD is in secondary school and there is nothing but heaps of fried rubbish in offer, I suppose to entice the young 'uns to buy it, so they make lots of money. But then I suppose realistically most teenagers prefer that sort of food anyway so they're prob thinking they're catering for the majority. DD however, prefers pasta salads and fruit, which tends not to be on offer. Think Jamie Oliver needs to come back....

DD (15) is always starving when she gets home, no matter what she eats at school. She never has time for the sit down option, which would be more nutritious and varied. She also carries a LOT to school every day (she walks) so I've never wanted to add a decent packed lunch to what she's already having to carry. It would be pretty banged about by the time she gets to eat it anyway.

I make sure she has money so she can buy something, and then I give her something when she gets in. Usually a bloomer or a bagel with lots of salad, and a bit of fruit or a smoothie. Or a bowl of noodles with veggies and broth and an egg. We eat a proper dinner together quite late. It doesn't cost a huge amount because she doesn't buy much at school and sometimes skips lunch altogether because there's no time to eat it.

During her exams I cook her a good breakfast as well.

As others note, there’s going to be other stuff on the menu (surely you must have seen this, schools do publish them).

I’d threaten him with the packed lunch option unless he starts eating properly.

In all of the schools I've worked in there has always been a good choice of meals and the hot pasta tubs are a favourite. Foods like pizza tend to go first and a ton of vegetables and salads are left! It's what the students choose and without adding the side dishes it doesn't look much.

I send my son with a lunch now as the queues are too long. I leave £10 in his account so he can get something if he wants to but he hardly ever does.

Dump the school food and give him a decent packed lunch instead!

The school "meals" sound like utter crap, just loads of cheap refined carbs and UPF rubbish that have no nutritional benefits and will just make him feel hungrier.

We do packed lunch mon-wed. Plus they can buy a break time snack.

But hot dinners Thurs and Fri and take in a break time snack

If the queues for the 'proper' school dinner are so long, most of the students must be choosing that.
I dont thinkn£3.20 for a 2 course meal is expensive

Send him in with a hearty packed lunch

If anybody says anything. Tell them your family doctor suspects he may be suffering from some kind of food allergy

Big waiting list to get investigated.

Ours are good. £2.60 for a main of protein/ carb/ veg, access to salad bowl, fruit, and small dessert.
(Pasta bolognese, curries, chillies etc)

DCs' school is £2.60 for their meal deal of main and dessert. I probably get slightly better value, but they still get a meal that they enjoy eating.

We had more bother with primary school where all children were given the toddler portion served to the yRs. Extra unlucky for y6 on last sitting as food was running out, and even tanking up on the less popular veg didn't fill the hole. I took DS1 off them at Christmas y6 as he was on the cusp of being underweight for the first time.

I could spend £2.60+ on a ready meal, and then join the queue for the microwave, so school dinner wins for me.

Ours is £6 a day so with two kids it’s crazy, they eat mostly crap like cookies and it drives me mad when they buy drinks… the minimum you can top up each child’s canteen money is £10 a time. Apparently no one has packed lunch and there’s no time to sit and eat it.

That's appalling. It sounds like the school is intentionally feeding the dcs rubbish to maximise profit.

Our school doesn't sell juice/fizzy drinks at all. There's water (free) and the little ones have the option of milk at lunchtime. A choice of hot lunches, or a sandwich are served, and cookies are limited. Fruit is free.

The problem in secondary school is that queues can be so long and lunch breaks so short that they don't have time to queue up for and eat a proper meal. Schools are setting kids up for a lifetime of gobbling down junk food.

3 teens 1 in college a yr 11 and yr 10 , I give each a fiver a day and they get a meal deal from the co op mostly ....its expensive but they would rather starve all day than be seen as the poor kid with a packed lunch (their words)

I wish my daughter in year 8 could get a school dinner; they’ve reduced the length of lunch time so much that there isn’t time for all the children who want a school dinner to get their food in time - she’s gone without lunch on two days in the past couple of weeks (and that’s with taking packed lunch in on some days)! She now keeps a couple of emergency food items in her bag for the days when she’s hoping to get a hot lunch but it isn’t ideal when she’s already carrying multiple books and PE kit etc! She has clubs after school on some days which mean she won’t get a hot dinner at home, so it isn’t great.

I would ask him to trial packed lunches for a week. I pack my two secondary aged boys a 5 or 6 item lunch, it works out way cheaper than school lunches which are mostly just stodge anyway, and I'm sure after a week of being able to sit down and eat a tasty lunch without queuing he will agree its better! Even more so if he gets to choose fillings for wraps/pittas etc. My youngest still has free lunches as in Y1 and his school kitchen seems to be able to serve a decent dinner for now! Good luck

School dinners in the UK started ‘taking the mock’ at exactly the same time they had to ‘be competitive’ and make a profit, my a private company rather than being provided by local authorities.

I’m in France, working in a secondary school and I eat in the canteen most days. the last meal I ate was:

Rice salad (rice, peppers, vinaigrette) starter
Ratatouille with roast chicken leg
Small piece of Camembert and some baguette
Fromage blanc with blueberries
Water to drink

Cost €4,25 so about £3.50

there are some choices - usually 2-3 salad starters, some kind of carb ie pasta / truce / couscous. yoghurt instead of cheese, fruit instead of dessert. But there are no:

sandwiches
muffins / donuts
biscuits
sausage rolls
filled rolls
crisps
chocolate / sweets
fizzy drinks

No tuck shop, no vending machines, no snack options. The amount of shit food that British school kids are offered at school astounds me.

If he only gets pizza and a cookie for that price, why is he complaining the chips are soggy??

There is new national guidance (already posted above). Challenge school governors/academy trustees if your school is not meeting the guidance.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/school-food-standards-resources-for-schools

Incentivise him, give him the money each week and give him the choice of shopping for stuff to make packed lunches, making his lunch and saving the leftover cash, or buying the crappy school dinners. It won't cost you any less but it'll get him making his own lunch (probably) and you'll not be overpaying for soggy chips and pizza.....

I think teens that age are always hungry almost regardless of what they have for lunch.