Free school meals for all infant children

[Scarletbanner]

What do you think? I think it's a great idea.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24132416

That's my mind made up now Wheresmycaffeinedrip. Our school is so cagey about their school dinners, their provenance, whether it's made on site or not, nobody seems to know. After asking them for ages for a menu, finally after 2 weeks they produced one. Cakes after every meal. Bread on the side etc etc. DS must be in food heaven as he is a carb addict. But he will eat nutritous food if he is not given the option of refined carbs. He likes wholemeal pasta with chicken and peas, wholemeal pitta with hummous/cheese etc, wholemeal quesadillas with red peppers and cheese etc. But not alongside cake and bread. he loves fruit at home, but alongside cake he would go for the cake!
I'm going to try out packed lunches and see how it goes.

choceyes .. Everything you list in your post is without exception healthier than the Eden Food menu I have in front of me here. Sausages in gravy with mash today. With cabbage. Followed by Eve's pudding and custard.

tedmundo I have left the iPad installing IOS7 at home, please don't say that!!

I don't really hold with fussy eating either, but the midday supervisors at school don't have the time to make sure all the children eat up, and I know from observing mealtimes that most of the children at our school aren't encouraged to eat their veg or whatever if they see a friend doing it. I am another one who can't see why the temp of a meal makes any difference - I make a healthy packed lunch with the occasional treat for my daughter and will do so for my son as well from next week when he's there all day. I know some lunch boxes are full of cr*p but my kids' aren't. And the meals cost £2.45. My DH and I are at home for lunch every day as we work nearby, so I always have things in for making lunch.

MrsDibble a cooked lunch containing all the food groups is only any good if the children eat it. Just because they are children, doesn't mean they deserve to be served with slop and undercooked food.

Our schools catering company proudly states on the web site. "No salt is added during or after the cooking process"

Seriously , think, how tasty would that actually be? Pasta? Potato? Yuck

I think we need to see the wider picture with this. Generally the benefit in this is for those children whose parents/carers are not so concerned about it as to post on mumsnet. I know from speaking to a friend who is an infants teacher in a deprived area that some children come to school hungry without a packed lunch. I agree that it would be better if it was for longer than to 7 - but look outside we have a downturn - surely this is better than nothing?

I have said that I agree the government should ensure school food is up to scratch.

Last week the menu consisted of fish fingers (home made no problem, but I believe these were the frozen variety with little actual fish in them), sausages, mince of some description, potato wedges, chips, beans etc etc. All of that sounds high in salt and processed. And bread alongside all of that, followed by cake...humph!
Also when DS has cake everyday after lunch, I feel like I can't give him anymore sugary food at home. I take him to a cafe after school on a friday as a treat for some nice cake, but I feel a tiny bit guilty thinking maybe it's too much sugar for him in one day when he's already had cake at lunch time! I'm really not a food nazi/health freak, but sugary stuff should be an occassional thing should it not, rather than daily? How do schools get away with it, with their "healthy meals" policy?

I don't hold with fussy eating either, but if I would try to give ds2 anything with dairy, peas, beans (of any type), lentils, nuts all I'd end up with is another epipen used, a trip to the hospital and a child who sees food as something that is dangerous and will hurt him.

I don't trust mass catering to be able to cope with special medical needs. He gets a healthy packed lunch, which he eats with his friends, some of whom also have packed lunches, so he doesn't feel isolated about his allergies yet again and we eat a cooked from scratch meal each evening together as a family.

He, and others like him do not need to have it pointed out any further that they will not enjoy the same relationship with food that others take for granted.

If school meals became compulsory (which smacks of socialist over-control of the 'uneducated' masses), I would have no option but to withdraw him from school for lunchtime, which would be a major hassle as I work FT and the school is > 3 miles away.

I'll probably get told off for this but... When I enrolled my child for Reception, amongst the many forms was one for claiming Free School meals. When I told them that was earning too much to claim and was not on benefits I was told that it didn't matter, that I didn't need to fill in the form and he would get free school meals anyway!???

Is this unusual or pretty common? This was in January this year 2013

My son has packed lunches as he's a bit fussy and I know that he would just eat bread and potatoes if he had school dinners (and probably leave out the potatoes). I also can't believe that they serve up a stodgy sweet pudding EVERY day! I know they offer fruit and yogurt as well but I can't think of many children who would choose an apple over a chocolate muffin! Also, is there still a stigma over free school meals?? In my day it was really clear who was on free school meals but now it seems that dinners are all pre-paid so it wouldn't be obvious who was eating free school meals...? Happy to be corrected though...
I also agree that Nick is trying to gain popularity... wonder what else he'll come up with!

The full plan they are proposing is here: www.schoolfoodplan.com/plan/
Personally I wouldn't trust the government to feed my children anymore than I trust them on any other issue!

www.schoolfoodplan.com/plan/

The cost of giving free school dinners to 30 children is roughly the cost of employing a TA. It would be interesting to have an experiment where one infant class all have an extra TA and another class has free school dinners and to see which group of children make the most progress.

Prehaps the simplest solution would be to have free school dinners for every child in schools where more than 30% of children qualify for fsm. The financial cost would be ofset by the fact that admin staff would not have to spend hours on the phone chasing non payers.

There is often a high number of working poor children in areas where there is also lots of fsm children. Rich parents usually avoid schools with lots of working class kids like the plague. The number of rich kids who attend working class schools is insignificant. It is well worth giving the odd rich kid a free school meal if it dramatically increases up take of free school meals when there is no stigma.

an election bribe, obviously.

We obviously wont be affected but it might encourage more children to try different foods and reduce food fads. It will also reduce the stigma of being on free school meals and make it easier for schools to budget for meals. Also government policies have hit families hard and this is a slight benefit.

But I'm not convinced it will be practical when so many schools closed kitchens. It will also mean those with allergies are singled out. I think I would have preferred a greater subsidy for primary school meals so that the cost could be reduced for all primary school children.

It depends where you live, Sailingdom There's a couple of LAs that are providing free meals, currently.

And this thread is in a week when I'm really struggling to persuade DS1 to eat any food at all at school. He asked for just a sandwich, yesterday, and it came home, untouched. :(

Although a wonderful idea in principle the logistics of it far outway the positives, not to mention the fact this is probably an empty promise as was the immigration idea Nick Clegg 'promised' to set up

A: Tax payers, again will lose out as any money they save will be plowed back in via higher taxes.

B: A lot of schools don't have the facilities for cooking.

C: If it goes ahead, will it be compulsory? As for my dd with sn who has packer lunches, she will not touch school dinners.

D: Not all companies provide these so called nutritional healthy meals, some of laden with junk or sugar, made cheapilly.

I don't believe the stats for a second! 1% of packed lunches have the nutritional value equal to school dinners?? Are you kidding me. There is no way that is true. Scaremongering!!!

Think the idea is that rather than ONLY give free meals to those on low incomes, the meals for all unless you opt out thing will not stigmatise those who receive them. I also think some people's idea of a packed lunch mya not be as good as a reasonable school meal. I do wonder how we can afford this though - if they are eating proper food that is. Cheap carbs (potatoes/white bread/white rice) stil seem to rule many school menus. Makes me think the food will be not that great and I can't see how many primaries will cook fresh food on premises either, as many primary schools no longer have kitchens. I assume it is meals on wheels (at a very low cost) for those without a kithcen on site, which doesnt sound that tempting, unless you have no other option (i.e. will have no meal at all if you dont eat the free one). Hmm looks like hearty packed lunch is still the best option for those who can do it though.

Crisps and pop is not a packed lunch to me but I expect this is where the "School dinners are better" argument comes from as I have seen children for whom this is their normal lunch (and breakfast). As a kid I had a chicke legs, salad and fruit for my packed lunch, or homwmade quiche and salad but was considered odd by others - this was in the 1980s when corned beef and crab sticks were considered good family foods.. Think the majority of people actually expect a lot more from their meals now, and that is part of the problem with school dinners. If you want a decent hot meal in school it will not be cheap to produce or to buy. Providing something that's not nice to eat or just cheap filler with littel nutrition may not help anyone - which child is going to opt for fruit over cake, or for roast vegetables over chips, and which child wants to eat cold salad/sandwich rather than hot meal on a cold winter day, even if that hot meal is chips and tiny bit of processed fish flakes encased in more greasy carb/fat mixture...

YY to giving each class a TA instead or decent books(the books my KS 2 kids bring home are dire quality,all dog eared). Or some kind of extra reading support on a daily basis to those struggling(given the impact that being an able reader has).Really in this time of austerity free school meals for a few(many of whom don't need them) is of the utmost priority?

Soooooo worth making all these people fall behind in their rent we're hearing about today.So little Johny gets to have the same lunch as the organic yaks milk drinkers but goes home worrying if he's going to be evicted.

I think if parents can pay and are happy to pay this is a waste of our money. As usual. Have eaten the school meals with our children several times (once a term they have a parents' week + am a school governor so go in for other days too) which is why I totally understand why ours ask to have packed lunch instead. Mostly I do pack lunch, the school lunch is a last resort if I'm disorganised. Thank god I'm such a irritating food snob marvellous and resourceful cook.

I think we need more evidence based spending. The universal free school dinner trials were in deprived areas. The introduction of universal free school meals made a huge difference in Newham and Hull because the parents didn't have the money or the knowledge to put together a decent packed lunch.

It would be interest to do a trial in surrey to see if universal free school meals made a difference to the results before giving fsm to all key stage 1 children.

I would think mumsnet is not necessarily a representative sample when it comes to packed lunches in that you have a bunch of motivated caring mums obviously focused on making sure their apparently fussy eating children eat their carefully nutritionally balanced lunch box and don't just eat the bits they like and chuck the rest. I agree that the quality of school dinners is important, but given that all the objectors on here are presumably giving their children beautifully healthy and balanced food the rest of the time, then will 5 lunches a week really skew the balance for them that much?

The key thing here is what the research shows: literacy improves, behaviour improves and even if this benefit in literacy and behaviour is most evident in those children on the cusp of FSM, then do we really as more interested/nutritionally aware parents begrudge that? Is this not a case of the general social good being more important than a selfish "my little johnny is really fussy" attitude. After all little Johnny can come home to his lovely home cooked nutritious dinner while his more borderline class mate may well not. And even those less nutritional school dinners will be better than the crap some of these children get at home (and my DD's school meals are gorgeous and far more varied than I make and before anyone says it, I make a lot of effort, I probably just don't push the boundaries of her taste enough - cauliflower biryani anyone?). So this is a social issue and if we are arguing that well we don't really care about benefiting other children only really our own, then think about this - better behaviour from those children does benefit our children so there is a selfish motivation after all.

Exactly really.

Also up the amount of those getting free school meals,raise the threshold of income from £16k or whatever it is.

The fact is the children needing these meals are a small fraction thankfully,many families provide good food on a small income.

Then put more into breakfast clubs and literacy support.If they can't read a cooked meal isn't going to help.

There are far better ways to raise attainment but then they wouldn't buy votes would they.Unless they increase dinner staff and training half this food will end up in the bin anyway.

Totally agree Madasabox