School dinners, who can afford them?

[darcymum]

Following on from another thread about being required to pay for school dinners for the first term at school I wondered what proportion of school meals are taken by children who do pay for them?

DD1 starts school in September and I plan to send her in with a packed lunch, as do other parents I know, mostly because packed lunches are cheaper. I have three DCs who will be in the three consecutive school years and definitely couldn't afford for all three to have school dinners. I know that the fact is about £2 for a hot meal is very good value but they will get a hot meal at home in the evening.

If I was entitled to free school meals I would send them every day, which made me wonder if it is mostly children getting free school meals who take them up. Anyone know? I have heard the argument that it might be the only hot meal children get but that could be equally true for children with parents not getting income support (or whatever), which case all children should get a free school meal. Maybe the money would be better spent increasing benefits for people with children and letting parents provide packed lunches and to having school dinners at all.

So are you proposing everyone starts at 7am, offices, banks etc?

Yes it does happen in warmer countries but hey guess what, we're not a warm country!!

Sorry not sure if you're seriuos in thinking it's a good idea to have kids going to school in the dark

Milamae - they're are deprived areas where parents don't give their kids three meals a day, hence the need for breakfast clubs
and lets not forget a lot of parents thought turkey twizzlers were a good meal

DD is at aprivate prep and school dinners are compulsaryy and cost is included in fees.

At the infant school I work at school dinner uptake varies each day, but is probably about 50/50 school dinner/packed lunch overall. many of these are NOT free chool meals, and we also have one or two children entitled to free meals who do not take them up every day, only some.

At the school I work at chidren chose each morning what they want for lunch - school dinner meat, school dinner veggie, school dinner Halal (if preregistered for Halal options) or packed lunch. The children all have up to date menus sent home so that parents can refer to these and we have copies in school too iin order for children to make their choices.

Our dinners are £1.90 IIRR.

It is a valid point about the cost to school of packed lunches.

School dinner costs include the cost of staff - both preparing meals and seving, and for supervising children, for setting up tables and clearing away afterwards.

Packed lunches currently are charged nothing. However, these children still need to be supervised by staff. The tables still need to be set out in advance and cleared away afterwards.

In other words - school meals must also cover the costs of staffing packed lunches. Nw I think of it, that doesn't seem as fair.

Compo, some jobs start at 5am, some at 10, some do shifts some do 9-5. You can't please all of the people all of the time.

Fwiw I gave up work because I knew I couldn't be in the City before 7am which is when I started work. What I do know is lots of people with children work part time and those hours would enable them to do a full morning without any need for any extra childcare during term time.

School is school, not childcare.

HATE the idea of school starting at 7:30am! I work in school. I'd have to be in for 6:30-7am, meaning I'd have to get up around 5:30am.

Many staff at schools have children - they would then need morning clubs in order to get to work on time - meaning breakfast clubs woul need to start around 6-6:30am, and staff for them to get in before 6am themselves.

And these sports clubs each afternoon - who is going to run them? The teachers? The same ones who have been teaching since 7:30am?

Milamae - a meal at school is the ONLY meal some children in our country get. Sadly not all children have adequate parents bringing them up.

School lunch was about £4 per day until Year 11, paid termly, with a terms notice for any change. In 6th form, they have their own dining room and pay for things on an item by item basis & can go out to lunch if they wish.

DS eats lots and seems to have developed good relationships with the dinner ladies. He is slim and they seem to think he needs feeding up so I'm always hearing about how he had a hot meal, with extra sandwiches to take out to the playing field and he raves about their fruit (5p a piece) - much prefers it to Waitrose organic!

If they get in early they can have bacon sarnies etc. and then there are flapjacks at break....I think he is in for a shock on the catering front when he goes to uni.

Regarding the pilot free school meals for all, I think it would be better if they raised the threshold of eligibility for FSMs a little. Seems wrong to me that a family on 150K plus in Islington will get FSMs while people on incomes of approx. 17K elsewhere will not.

"a meal at school is the ONLY meal some children in our country get. Sadly not all children have adequate parents bringing them up."

I think this is a very good argument for free school meals for all. I have heard it before in relation to FSM but think if you don't give your child one good meal a day it is nothing to do with poverty and more about being a crap parent which I don't think has any connection to weather you get income support or not.

"school meals must also cover the costs of staffing packed lunches. Nw I think of it, that doesn't seem as fair."

That would effectively be charging children to go to school, would you want to charge them for play time supervision as well?

Sorry but I think providing kids with free hot meals just enables inadequate parents to stay inadequate. What incentive is it to make a parent get off it's arse and cook a decent cheap meal if somebody does it for them?

The money would be far better spent on providing information and education re providing cheap healthy meal.

I have to say I've taught in many deprived areas and don't think I've ever seen a starving child. I've taught many well fed healthy children whose parents manage to do it on very little. Living in a deprived area does not mean a child needs to be fed inadequate meals.Healthy food 9 times out of 10 is a lot cheaper than processed high fat food.

DD has school dinners twice a week on average - we're lucky to have the day-to-day flexibility, although personally I think I'm less than lucky that there are usually only two meals a week she will eat (total choice of fifteen, a meat-based, a veggie and a salad). £2 a time - good value for a roast dinner and cooked pudding, not so great for her rendition of a cheese salad, followed by a yogurt.

When the new contractors started the head told us the price was going up, reminded us that we could send packed lunches, but looked a little disapproving and asked us to think about whether we really considered a packed lunch to be a proper meal? Erm - yes?! The school doesn't exactly have the kind of demographic where he has to worry about the kids being fed properly in the evenings.

DD has the cooked dinners to give me a break for making packed lunches (hate it - she eats so few things it's frustrating) and gives us some flexibility to not always have to bother with a cooked evening meal. On the other hand with the packed lunches I know exactly what she's eaten, rather than what was on the menu that day.

Ingredients cost 70p per meal btw ... I know the school pays the utilities for the kitchen and dining hall, I think they pay the lunchtime supervisors but not the kitchen staff, can't remember the details.

"The money would be far better spent on providing information and education re providing cheap healthy meal."

Yes maybe, although not sure the money should be spent telling people what is and isn't health as I sure they have a good enough idea already. Maybe better to spend it increasing benefits for people who would get FSM.

We all know that fruit/veg are good but does everybody know about healthy fats,not too much fats,carbs etc and how to incorporate that into a healthy meal that feeds a family and costs little?

I don't think so.

It's an easy when you know how situation imho.

"We all know that fruit/veg are good but does everybody know about healthy fats,not too much fats,carbs etc and how to incorporate that into a healthy meal that feeds a family and costs little?"

No, but do we have to, our diets don't have to be perfect they just have to be good enough. Besides what constitutes a health diet changes almost weekly according to what we read, are eggs in or out this week....I can't remember.

Our meals are £1.80. My dd has them occassionally. However, I do not think its good value for say infant children as they eat so little of it. I guess its better value when they get older.

The school dinners at my DS school are excellent for £1.90. We receive a weeks menu in advanced and it is very well planned. Packed lunch would be more expensive. If you sent a sandwich and crisps the packed lunch police will write to you to tell you how useless you are. No one has free school dinners because they would not suffer the embarassment. I think they like to pressurise everyone into having a paid for lunch as they like to collect money at every possible opportunity.

My DC take school dinners in primary school. It is currently $8.50/week and the food is homemade using fresh local seasonal produce. They love it. My secondary school children get $10/week and with that can get a hot or cold meal at school. I tend to make a hot nutritious meal every evening too, and they snack quite substantially, including lots of fruit. Feeding my lot costs a fortune.

We currently just pay all of this, but DH is still redundant (it's been a year now) and we are running out of money - I sure hope he finds work soon, or I move back into my old, much more lucrative, career or I don't know what we'll do.

1 loaf of tesco seeded bread (14 slices, 7 lunches) = £1
1 packet of cheese big enough to fill those sandwiches = £2
1 cucumber = 80p
7 apples, Tesco Value = £1
1/2 packet of tesco value chocolate biscuits = 20p
7 carrots = 50p

Total £6 for 7 lunches = just over 85p per day

7 school lunches £12.95 = £1.85 per day

Add 6to that the fact that if all he can eat is my relatively healthy packed lunch he will eat it, and that if given a choice of pasta bake, roast dinner with vegetables and meat and fruit, yoghurt or hot pudding (cake and custard, basically) he will eat pasta with raost potatoes and bread with cake and custard for afters and will leave all the vegetables because it's ALWAYS peas or sweetcorn and he doesn't like either - why would I pay for a meal so appallingly balanced that I have to feed him superfoods at every other meal to make up for it?

Ours, like hula's are compulsory and £230 a term - they are very good though.

ALouiseg - I dont see how that part-time thing would work as most people I know do 3 whole part time days iyswim not half a day everyday. It just wouldnt be possible to get upto London for half a day.

And my parent company is in LA and it is almost unheard of for a woman to go back after having a baby because of the school/work situation and of course the crap maternity leave/pay etc so your bucolic surfing dream has its downsides.

Surely it's the responsibility of parents to see their children are properly fed? Universal free school meals would be yet another drain on the state to catch the inadequate few. What next, meals-on-wheels during the holidays?

The school needs to provide either a decent inexpensive meal or the facility to eat packed lunch, which most do.

I quite see why people who are on benefits should get free school meals, if they didn't then the cost of feeding children would have to be factored in somewhere else, but for the rest of us it's our own business. £2 per meal is not bad, yes you could do a packed lunch cheaper but you'd have to be pretty economical do to a hot meal for less, including drink, salad, dessert and fruit.

On days when my kids have school hot dinner they have a snack tea. The only problem I see is school insisting on paid dinners for everyone.

my DC's only get packed lunches on the odd occasion. Like when we've run out of stuff for lunches/are running late, or the occasional treat when it's Roast or chips day. Our meals are £2 each, and with 2 DC's and a looming mat leave, we can't afford the extra £80 per month.

All four of us take lunches to work/school, and it saves us a fortune. typically the kids have a sandwich, packet of crisps, 2 pieces of fruit and a frube - along with a water bottle. We do have issues with our son not eating all of it (namely his sandwiches), but then he does the same if he suddenly realises there's cheese or ham in his school dinner.

Me and DH take in something similar or take leftovers. Definitely costs us less to feed all four of us like this than to pay for 2 lots of school meals every day

No not the "well off pontificating",the non well off getting pissed off that they can't afford school dinners and others get it free when they would be perfectly capable of providing decent low cost meals themselves just the same as may others have to.

Many people have to keep to a food budget and do so.

Giving people who feed their kids crap more money and no information is just going to mean they go out and buy even more crap. Crap costs a lot,lentils to bulk out mince,potatoes doesn't.