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.

"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." Yes but the information is already out there, as I said people don't need to be experts. I think the reason people feed children badly isn't because they thought KFC every night was good for them....maybe I'm wrong.

It's not that they think KFc every night is GOOD for them, it's that they don't think it is bad for them and some people lack the cooking skills to make healthy cheap food taste good - face it, it can be a challenge.

My dd has a pack lunch because at £2.10 a day school dinners are too expensive.
I try and bring her packed lunch in about £1 a day this includes a yoghurt, sandwich,cucmber, fruit and a homemade cake.sometimes she will have houmous and pitta bread and carrots or cold pasta from the night before.
our food budget for the whole family for the week is £40 if she had school dinners that would take away a 1/4 of the budget.
and I would still have to cook and evening meal for my family as they all have a snacky lunch.Also my dh makes her lunch as he makes a pack lunch everyday for himself so he makes hers at the same time.
If we had the money or we got free school dinners I would send her for a school dinner as I really like the idea but I can't justify it.

my DD chooses daily depending on whats on (we have a 3 week rota on food each term) the menu but next year when my other DD starts too i think will be perminently switching to pack up. School dinners are £8.50 a week per child and ive been in to school when she has been eating her dinner and you dont get much. She always comes home hungry. I know with a pack up she has everything she likes in there so will eat it all up. I normally give her sandwhich/wrap, yogurt, fruit and bun/flapjack with a dilute juice in her bottle.

agree with bringing back cooking lessons too, my DD always is eager (to the point of obsessive) to help me to cook tea on an evening. She also is insistent on having a hot meal every day!

milamae, you sound aggressive to some perceived injustice, but FYI

1. islington 8th most deprived borough in england

1. the families around here who do have middling to insane incomes do not send their kids to state school

1. the scheme was part of a pilot under labour which was due to be rolled out over england depending on cost benefit analysis of results

1. adequate parenting requires development of the individual's personal and collective moral responsibility plus the exercise of free will. The shite-behaving parents I talk to round here have none of these as a combo of rancid social situations they live in. A state of collective depression and hopelessness endured with loads of asbo acting out etc. We could send them to re-education and socialisation for about 5 years or do this one small thing proven to increase behaviour and positive outcomes in the classroom.

Good post merryberry

Free school meals for all then! I'd vote for that (as long as it wasn't crap though).

totally agree good food and a decent sleep. My DD is 5 and i cant believe how many of her classmates go to bed at 9-10pm my DD is in bed at 7:30pm every night and gets 12 hours sleep.

Sorry this bothers me. Free school meals forced on everyone whether they want it or not is an utter waste of money. The country does not have this money. I'd love the struggling families, to have the free hot dinner but it's OTT to achieve that by making it universal.

Merryberry, wouldn't your families mostly be entitled to free school dinners anyway as mostly on benefits?

Not aggressive Merryberry just shocked at such an expensive ludicrous scheme this country just can't afford. I have a sneaking suspicion that it may just disappear when councils are struggling to pay and keep teachers,nurses in employment over the next few months.

There must be plenty of people living on middle incomes in Islington(on a London salary) with kids not in private schools perfectly capable of funding their own school meals. Where do all the teachers,nurses live?

This country just can't afford to keep going on like this it's utter madness, at some point govs just have to bow out. Provide housing,give benefits etc but I'm sorry wasting money on free school meals for all to mop up a few that don't take them up is utter bonkers.

Actually kids fed a constant diet of crap at home aren't suddenly going to start munching greens at school. They'll do what most other kids do(my 2 very healthy eaters included)and ignore the 'optional salad bowl" and fresh fruit , pick off the toppings from the pizzas,leave their broccoli and fill up on the stodgy sugary puds on offer. All at the tax payers expense.

I think far more needs to be done in educating parents and families so that healthy cheap food is ingrained. Providing healthy cheap family meals is an art that has long since gone out the window,I've had to research it myself.

I had thought that School Dinners were great - carrying on from nursery that a hot dinner in the middle of the day was great and nutrious.

This was before i realized how little they get in their school dinner. I went to the trouble of ringing the catering company for the school and they said that they allow 30g of broccoli which works out to be an middle size floret, a table spoon of peas - so actually not very much my children can easily eat 3 times that amount.

I had always wondered why they were so hungrey when they got home from school and just presumed they were being greedy.

I now give them packed lunches and a hot tea at home and they are much more satisfied.

From my experiance i have learn't the hot isn't always better! Also, most disturbingly reception children had the same allowances and those children in year 6...

I pay about £2 a day for 3 of mine, 1 has packed lunch as he is fussy. So that is £30 a week but saves the hassle of making packed lunches/running out of bread etc. However, if we ever need to make cutbacks this will be one of first things to cut back on so may all end up on butties at some point.

I think it's £1.85 here, not entirely sure as we pay termly. To be honest we never even tried packed lunches (except for the initial few "taster" sessions in school where no school meals were offered, and I found even that such a pain) and the dc are used to eating hot lunches so we went that way.

I strongly disagree with free school meals for everyone. It is nice but, sadly, something this country just couldn't afford.

At our school they are £1.85 and are quite decent, ds (7) gets a limited choice and they are nutritionally balanced. He can be a bit picky so sometimes ends up with odd combinations but the dinner ladies always encourage them to have veg on the side, and fruit is always available.

I decided on school dinners because I work full time, and find it enough of a struggle organising having uniforms, PE kits and my own stuff ready never mind doing a pack up as well. He goes to after school club till 5.30 and has a snack there, and by the time we get home its too near bed and bath time to be thinking about cooking a meal, so he has a sandwich/beans on toast/soup type of tea.

Most of his friends have school dinners, and it does seem to me to be a working mums = school lunch, SAHM = pack up split in his year at least. I guess it comes down to time and organisation!

I'm also against free school meals for all, as at our school there are plenty who can afford them. However I also think that the provision of free school meals should be broader, there must be a compromise between making them universally free and the system we have now.

Interesting thread. Seems like the proposed charge of £2.30 a day at ds's school are at the very expensive end of the range.

It's currently all packed lunches as there is no kitchen. We've been trying to do something about it, and after being encouraged to apply for some funding which then turned out to be not available or something have had long negotiations with the high school next door. I'm worried that many parents will say 'no' to £2.30 a day (which is fair enough) and we'll end up right back where we started.

I'm quite suprised at how many of you oppose free dinners. If you think only about the amount of money this country spends on Heroin and benefits for peple who simply don't fancy getting up every morning, 2 pound per child per day doesn't seem to be a lot and would be of a greater benefit to the society.

There are about 8.5million school age dcs in the UK. Assuming it cost £2 a day to feed them it would cost £17million a day, or £3230000000 for 190 school days. It would be less due to economys of scale/indie/HE children but I am failing to see the benefit to society of spending that amount of money on food that parents are more than capable of providing it themselves. I think it would increase the attitude in some parents that school is 100% resonsible for every facet of their childs life.

What is the specific benefit to society of parents not having to pay to feed their child?

The specific benefits to drug addiction programmes is the reduction in crime. Drug related crime cost arounf £14 billion a year and there is the human cost felt by victims of crime.

The benefits of paying people who don't bother to get out of bed in the morning is the safety net is wide enough to catch people who can't find work for various reasons.

'I think it would increase the attitude in some parents that school is 100% resonsible for every facet of their childs life.

What is the specific benefit to society of parents not having to pay to feed their child?'

I agree.

And people on full benefits are entitled to free school meals already.

Jacinda - the amount our society spends on heroin? Not enough - not much at all in fact, not nearly enough to really solve the problem full stop and lessen crime imo.

My kids now have packed lunches which is alot cheaper than school dinners. They just got too expensive. My nine year old won't eat pasta, mince, mash or new potato so I questioned whether he was getting his money's worth anyway. I suspect not as that is half the menu for the week.

They get a hot meal every evening so I don't think its a problem.