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Takeaway van on school site

24 replies

Caty85 · 04/12/2024 21:36

Hi, our school advertise every week to come and support a local pizza takeaway van that parks in the school at 3pm. Is this allowed? They send messages about us only providing healthy food to the kids and every week is a battle to leave school avoiding it. It's quite expensive and so it's tricky doing the school run with this there. I'm not sure of the link between school and the private company x

OP posts:
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yehisaidit · 04/12/2024 22:27

Have you approached the school?

Wolfiefan · 04/12/2024 22:28

How is it a battle? No kids. We have snacks at home and it’s too early for dinner.

SchoolDilemma17 · 04/12/2024 22:29

Just don’t stop there. Who needs pizza at 3pm

NantesElephant · 04/12/2024 22:31

Complain to the school. Tone deaf of them in a cost of living crisis.

LittleRedRidingHoody · 04/12/2024 22:34

I mean is it super unhealthy? If it's fresh dough, good ingredient sauce, and decent cheese that's not so bad.

Signed, someone very jealous we don't have a pizza van 😂

Edingril · 04/12/2024 22:38

No one is forced to buy it I presume?

BookGoblin · 04/12/2024 22:38

Would have loved this 😄 Yummy slice of fresh pizza isn't a bad snack at all.

Oblahdeeoblahdoe · 04/12/2024 22:49

Definitely approach the school and ask how it complies with their healthy eating policy.
I was a Healthy Schools Co-ordinator in a previous life and we had very high targets from the local authority as to how many schools achieved the award. It used to boil my piss that that same LA gave licences to local ice cream vans to park up outside schools!
Presumably the school is receiving some rent from the pizza company but what next? Selling fags? It's totally hypocritical.

AngelontopoftheTree · 04/12/2024 22:51

Why are the school promoting it? If so straight out how this aligns to their healthy eating program?
Where I live fast food places must be at least 400m away from schools.

ChunkyMunky · 04/12/2024 22:53

YANBU, that’s a weird clash of messages and priorities. It doesn’t fit with healthy schools guidance, and it’s a poor judgement call allowing private business to profit from pester power on the school site.

Schools do seem very varied on this though. We have one local school which is very strict on food and healthy eating, and another which has the PTA on the playground selling sweets every week.

Pizza isn’t necessary awful, it can be a part of an acceptable, varied diet. But this does sound like it’s promoting the idea of eating unhealthy convenience food on a regular basis.

You can raise your concerns with the governing body if you wish.

sprigatito · 04/12/2024 22:54

I can never understand the outrage about pizza. Bread, tomato, cheese. It's not even fried 😂

Either buy it or don't. There's no need to get everything banned just because you don't want it. (If it was an ice cream van you might have a point).

ChunkyMunky · 04/12/2024 22:57

sprigatito · 04/12/2024 22:54

I can never understand the outrage about pizza. Bread, tomato, cheese. It's not even fried 😂

Either buy it or don't. There's no need to get everything banned just because you don't want it. (If it was an ice cream van you might have a point).

I suspect it is about portion size. There’s far more cheese on most pizzas than would be considered a ‘recommended portion’, so they can end up being quite high fat.

Sherrystrull · 04/12/2024 22:58

Primary or secondary school?

TeenGreenBottles · 04/12/2024 23:04

sprigatito · 04/12/2024 22:54

I can never understand the outrage about pizza. Bread, tomato, cheese. It's not even fried 😂

Either buy it or don't. There's no need to get everything banned just because you don't want it. (If it was an ice cream van you might have a point).

This. 100%

Plus most schools have pizza on their lunch menus.

Thevelvelletes · 04/12/2024 23:31

Who owns the pizza van and do they have a link to the school IE partner etc?

MyOtherCarIsAPorsche · 05/12/2024 01:14

Hopefully it only sells pizza.

When I was at high school there was an ice cream van just outside the school gates every lunchtime and home time. It did a roaring trade.

As well as selling ice cream, drinks and snacks it also sold single cigarettes. Confused

Currently there's an ice cream van which parks on the road outside my grandchildren's primary school every Friday - it's every weekday from when the weather improves. Lots of parents complain about their children wanting an ice cream before their main meal and the children having huge meltdowns because they're told no. They want the ice cream man banned.

My grandchildren ask for ice cream every time they see the van. My granddaughter has been at that school for 5 years, she has autism and has always accepted 'no' for an answer (without meltdown) as do her younger brothers (also additional needs). I think that the van is allowed to trade where it wants and must be doing a good trade because it's been there for years. So it must be lucrative as it always seems to have a long queue of customers.

Everyone has the choice of what and when to eat. When children become more independent at high school they choose what they eat. It's better nowadays with parent pay where children are more or less forced to eat in the high school setting. When I was in high school I never bought dinner tickets. I used to go to the 'row of shops' nearby like a good proportion of others. I used to share an uncut loaf with a friend, hollow it out, fill with a bag of crisps and 'supplement' with a polystyrene cup of soup. Some days it was chips and beans if you managed to get a seat in the cafe. Some days it was a pie. Some days a can of coke and a mars bar.

But then I walked to and from high school - every day, in all weathers - took just over an hour. And I carried a tenor saxophone every day in a massive case - as well as books, PE kit, occasional baking equipment. It never entered my head that I could ask my parents for a lift because we had school buses for that purpose which I decided I wouldn't be using.

It's down to individual responsibility.

But if I could ban something outside the school gates (literally tethered to the school gates) it would be dogs. Since Covid, children now have to wait outside the school grounds until two mins before the registers close (how on earth does that work?). So hundreds of parents and children have to stand either on the drive/road which goes into school or the village green. The village green, at drop off/pick up, contains at least a couple of dozen dogs (mainly reactive jumping animals) which parents insist have to clutter the school run. They foul the village green for the children to traipse animal excrement into school on their shoes, smash it into the class carpet and then sit on the carpet, leaning on their hands, picking at the soles of their shoes, playing with the hair of the girl in front of them, several times throughout the school day. It's unbelievable how often 'noro virus' goes round schools. Must be every week - amazing how many times the teachers insist that my grandchildren have noro virus - I had no idea you could catch it so frequently.

I had to pick up my grandson from that school today because he'd been asleep for two hours (he has epileptic seizures during the night and he is always tired and any focals or absences at school can make him sleepy afterwards). When I got to the school office they asked if I would wake him as they didn't want him to be confused on waking up and induce a seizure. When I got to the class he was lying on several cushions on the floor in the book corner. I bent down to wake him and had to exclaim 'oh no I can smell really strong dog dirt'. The class assistant brightly replied that she thought she'd cleaned it up. I ended up having to put an extremely whiffy child in my (new) car to take home with me and had to decontaminate his uniform (none on his shoes) just what he'd picked up from lying on the carpet/cushions. I hope he doesn't develop 'noro virus'.

H can take my car to be valeted whenever, I'll use my other car in the meantime. It only has two seats - who will do the school run now?

Caty85 · 05/12/2024 16:32

Thanks all, it's some really interesting points. It just doesn't sit well with me to have a private company physically on site and school actively advertising their business in the newsletter/ website/ emails etc. Pizza isn't the worst thing but neither is it the healthiest and they message us a lot about sending in healthy snacks and lunches and yet this turns up every week and they are promoting it. It's not sold by the slice so you have to buy a pizza and it's not cheap either and 3pm is too early for tea. I just can't understand how school are involved in it at all tbh. It's a primary school too. If it was rocking up outside the school and had a licence then you just choose but school do tell the kids about it coming so then they really want it. Just seems strange to me the whole situation. Totally get if some of you think it's a good thing. Each to their own.

OP posts:
SchoolDilemma17 · 05/12/2024 16:53

“It's not sold by the slice so you have to buy a pizza and it's not cheap either and 3pm is too early for tea.” You don’t have to do buy one!

not sure why you get so worked up about this? Are your school dinners healthy? Does your PTA encourage chocolate, cake and biscuits and sweets donations? Is your summer and Christmas fair mostly centred around eating and winning junk food? These are the issues at my child’s school and a lot harder to avoid than a van.

PromoJoJo · 05/12/2024 16:58

This reply has been withdrawn

Withdrawn at the poster's request.

Caty85 · 05/12/2024 17:03

I wouldn't say I'm getting worked up by it! Just reaching out to gain other views on it. Totally fine if you disagree and think it's a good thing. We are all entitled to our own views. Yes, our PTA is exactly the same and also don't cater to allergies which makes it more challenging.

OP posts:
INeedNewShoes · 06/12/2024 10:15

It's such a weird decision on school's part. I wonder if the pizza vendor is somehow related to one of the staff and they're trying to support their business!

My DD wouldn't even bother asking me to buy pizza from a van at 3pm on a school day. She herself would think it's weird in terms of location and timing. Only time we would do something like this would be at a festival or similar.

DarkAndTwisties · 06/12/2024 10:53

I wonder if the pizza vendor is somehow related to one of the staff and they're trying to support their business!

I was wondering the same. I've never seen a food van consistently on a school site (as opposed to just for a summer fete or something), or a school advertising it.

museumum · 06/12/2024 10:56

I'm torn as to whether it's appropriate for them to be on site. But I definitely don't think they should get free advertising in the newsletter. What about the next nearest takeaway or local bakery? Are they allowed free advertising too?
Our school have a long standing relationship with the local convenience store but they only appear in the newsletter when they donate to the school fundraising or sponsor an event.

MargaretThursday · 07/12/2024 11:43

Only on MN would you get the slippery slope will inevitably go from pizza to fags....

What's in pizza?

Bread, cheese and tomato.

Would you think someone was being unhealthy if they admitted with horror in the voice that they fed their dc cheese and tomato sandwiches after school?
No. Then stop being so ridiculous.

Ice cream van used to stop outside school. There were two sorts of parents:
The ones who told their children "no unless a special treat" and stuck to it, and generally the children didn't do more than ask once.
The other sort said "no", bought one anyway and complained the ice cream van shouldn't be there.

We had the arrangement that Friday was the only day I'd consider buying one and if they asked and it wasn't Friday then the answer on Friday would definitely be no. Worked a treat, even after they worked out we went a different way on Fridays half the time. 🤣

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