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

Breathe slowly and make hay, thank you for your offers to donate your fsm to the likes of myself. It means a lot. I do hope there will be a facility for this...

Offering a "treat" pudding everyday means that they aren't actually treats.
It's not a treat- it's part of a balanced meal
children actually need fat and calories as part of their diet

I'm not impressed and its not going to win my vote.

A ridiculous policy IMO.

Roll it out first by lowering the threshold for FSM.
Improve the quality of the cooking and the size of the portions. As an ex educator I frequently experienced over cooked vegetables, bizarre combination rules and I know that not every school cooks meals on site, some schools can cook for three or four surrounding schools and ship the meals out.

DS will remain on packed lunches with his wholemeal or rye bread, 2 portions of fruit, cheese and biscuits, a yoghurt and a small piece of homemade cake.

They don't need that fat and calories to come from sugar filled cakes though.

I don't deny that children need fat and calories, but they don't need sugar. Perhaps we are an unusual family, but our meals don't have puddings. We definitely manage to get enough fat and calories.

Criminal waste of money; should be spent on extra teachers (far too many TAs already)and classrooms; very suspicious about where £600,000,000 is to come from;
Many school dinners pre-cooked and frozen off the premises; is this really a healthy option?
An excuse for even more families to avoid a cooked evening meal;
Better to police bedtimes and breakfasts if they really want to improve children's performance in school (although impossible to achieve);
Any consideration given to the extra time needed to serve 100% of children rather than 40% maximum take-up at present?
but: glad to see all parents would benefit, particularly the 'better-off' parents who actually contribute the taxes in the first place;

Interesting article in the Guardian questioning the research,the queues,food complaints and the fact that spending money on boosting attainment in other ways would have a far bigger impact- but then that wouldn't buy votes would it.[cynic emotion]

The cost is going to be far bigger when you factor in the cost of building new kitchens,extra equipment for those that have them.Personally unless they massively increase / train dinner staff too(another expense) a lot of all this money will simply end up in the swill bins.

Question- what are you going to do with the kids that never have or like veg?Are you going to make them choose it and remove desert until they've eaten it(can just see the steaming parents now)? If they don't choose it are they just going to have a plate with just a piece of meat and two potatoes ie go hungry?At the mo they give them bread if they don't want the veg and carb and they fill up on the sugary dessert.

I'll wager the schools in the study had extra staff helping choices and sitting with reluctant veg eaters and how long would that last in the real world?

I used to have school meals and can still remember how hungry I used to get by lunchtime, despite usually having 2 bottles of free milk at break. Was a very active child, non car owning family so walked and cycled everywhere.
Meat, gravy, veg and mashed potatoes followed by sponge and custard felt like exactly what we needed and we all cleared our plates.
Wholemeal sandwiches and fruit might be a healthy meal for an adult, and perhaps a very inactive child, but wouldn't have given us the calories we needed to keep going (and growing).

Ben then you add cheese and send more sandwiches.Not hard and fills my growing boys up beautifully.

Whole meal bread fills you up better than white which they serve at school and our menu contains sandwich and snack options the kids often choose.Have had many a battle tying to make kids choose the cooked option.

I think it will be really good for families on a low income who receive FTC because they are unable to claim atm even though they have the same income as those able to claim.

I hope they extend it to juniors in time.
If it isn't what some parents and children like then they can send a packed lunch instead.

I am amazed that here on mumsnet a lot of people cannot see that the benefit in this is not for those whose children have delicious balanced packed lunches (and a variety of food at home). It is for those children who don't.

We won't benefit as my dc is at a private school - however, I am very happy for my tax to be spent on this policy as some children do not get enough to eat

For 3 years of their education. It's hardly going to do much long term is it and you can bet that after the election any talk of extending is forgotten!

Using money to improve the nutrition of children is great but I am not in any way convinced this will do it.

Why not give money to schools to provide free/very cheap breakfast clubs for everyone so no child starts without food. Spend the money on making sure more children get access to free school meals for their whole school career.

Or even spend money on helping families improve their view of food and cooking skills, invest in vastly improving the "food technology" lessons in school so that children have the skills to make changes in the long term

Smell those are a small proportion already being catered for.There are better ways to reach more of those truly in need,up the fsm threshold,bringing in breakfast clubs and give free breakfasts on top not free meals for families the maj of which don't need it,others are paying for and not getting.

I thought universal credit was supposed to make things easier,they means test CB so it isn't that hard to reach more needy children.

The vast majority of parents are perfectly capable financially and otherwise to feed their kids and should be doing so without relying on others to do it for them.

I think the issue is that there are parents who don't care. There are also families who just don't have food in the house. I am helping out at a foodbank at the moment - some of the stories are shocking

Well those families will be helped by the threshold being raised and helped more by breakfast clubs.

And they are the families which should be being helped not those who are perfectly capable of affording food

Re parents who don't care ss should be involved.You don't spend millions to mop up a few families- unless you want to buy votes.

It's chucking money away that could be spent on those who really need it.

Part of my job involves administering FSMs. You could very easily extend the scheme to include those who are eligible for Working Tax Credit. This would pick up the so called 'Squeezed Middle' (in my opinion it's more of a pissed upon middle) and would only involve a little more administration (a quick check once a year).

On a personal note, I decided not to put my DD on school dinners as she really struggles with a knife and fork. You can't see this with sandwiches, but it would embarrass her if she had school dinners.

"On a personal note, I decided not to put my DD on school dinners as she really struggles with a knife and fork. You can't see this with sandwiches, but it would embarrass her if she had school dinners."

Lots of children struggle with a knife and fork at school. Dinner ladies are usually kind. I am sure she would learn quick enough if he had school dinners. Just like reception children's dressing skills improve dramatically in the first term.

Retropear - respect your view, but don't agree this would catch the most vunerable. There have been some shocking cases recently and not all children who are hungry are on FSM

If you're referring to the two cases recently a free school meal wouldn't have saved either.

DP died because several agencies let him down.

If they raised the threshold all hungry children would be catered for.Those not eligible and not feeding their dc sorry but i's a SS issue.If SS let them down that is a whole different issue.

Most families on low,middle and high incomes feed their children properly.

And if it's enforced and packed lunches are banned you are merely shifting the hunger/malnutrition to a different group of children.

Many of whom won't be able to speak up.

and do we think one free meal term time only for just 3 years is suddenly going to solve issues?

No it's not sirzy

It's going to make the kids less identifiable

And surely that's a bad thing. Because you can't help what you can't see.