Free school meals for all infant children

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

No, but Osmium was talking about her own experiences as a child regarding having FSM.
Having worked as a mid-day supervisor in school I can confirm all children having school dinners were in the same line, but if I'd cared I could have noticed who had FSM as was marked slightly differently on the printed dinner register from school office - but frankly no-one notices or cares. Quite right too.

We are presented with the Herts menu linked by Misdee up thread and while it might not come across well in print the reality of the food is much worse it is truly appalling food - the roast dinners are an education and it's no surprise that the otherwise excellent school does not invite parents in for a taster. My kids won't eat it because the quality is so poor, all the food thy get at home is truly from scratch, they know the difference. They even leave the puddings behind, my dcs feel sorry for friends whose parents force them to eat school dinners.

Personally I would prefer to see a forced increase in food standards, stop feeding kids dinner on a prison tray, stop using processed foods and increase the income threshold for free school dinners. We do not need the Gov assistance to feed our kids but surely the income threshold of £16k is too low.

Our school meals were fantastic.

It was very noticeable who has the school meals. The children on school meals would concentrate in class, play school sports with enthusiasm, were generally well behaved and enjoyed school.

The children who didn't have an adequate lunch found it difficult to concentrate and couldn't keep up with the class, things needed to be explained and repeated several times. Some were disruptive. Some made their own food choices and so ate a pack of crisps for breakfast and a pack of crisps for lunch :(

But do you think that the the quality and consistency would be maintained if this comes into fruition?. It could double or treble the amount of food needed and your current suppliers may be unable to provide the amounts needed or the funding given is no where near enough to continue the contracts with them.

I think it's a great idea, i hope it comes to Wales. The school meals here are really healthy and nutritious but before long i will have 3 children in school which, if all 3 want school meals (which i hope they do) is going to cost me an arm and a leg so to have one, two or three of their meals (depending on how old they are) for free will be a huge help financially.

wheresmycaffeine - a couple of key points:

school dinners in my children's schools are actually quite nice yes. I would think that is important and as other people have pointed out if everyone had school dinners or there was more uptake then people could agitate for better food.

Secondly, if you read any of my other posts you will see that I have already said that the mums commenting on this thread are clearly motivated to feed their children well. I have no view on any allergies or otherwise. I was making no comment on you or indeed any other parent on this thread in terms of feeding your child. You know your child, I don't. I am not agitating for your choices to be removed. All I am saying is that presuming because you care about what your child eats, everyone else does too is clearly wrong, because if that was true then we would not have a problem with malnutrition and secondly and in contrast obesity would we?

snowlie
My children have herts school dinners and I have eaten several herts school dinners when I worked in a herts school. They weren't awful.

Prehaps what this shows is that that quality of staff and cooking facilties a school has really makes a difference.

But is it not possible that it could in fact go the other way? That it wouldn't lead to better food. Just the opposite. Quality comes at a price. And anything that has to be instantly available at a low price is inevitably poorer quality. Every kid will suffer in the bid to help everyone. Meat especially will be the concern. I'm sure it's not been unnoticeable of late that supermarket meat has significantly deteriorated in quality. Decent meat is becoming increasingly hard to come by. If supermarkets are failing to serve quality to the masses with a whole host of budgets to play with, what makes you think that other surpliers would fare any better. I've worked in catering fir many years and seen what many companies can offer and it's not great. Passable sometimes but truly awful at others.

It's the logistics that are impossible and of course as prices increase will the funding follow suit or will it stay the same. Will schools have free reign to source their own stock or will it be dictated by the government. Some dinners are bad enough now this could lead to little more than pet food being served.

what about the schools with no kitchens?

Our children deserve better than mass produced processed/reformed crap. Inevitabley that's what will become of the meals and if the whole point is to ensure that the kids get away from that kind of thing as that's what the parents know or all they can afford then what they are getting is no better than what they are getting at home which defeats the whole object.

Herts council use McCain and Bird's Eye products and then they suggest they cook all their food from scratch. Damned lies! I agree the staff that heat up these items make a difference but I still want my dcs eating freshly made food - it tastes better and they are more likely to eat it.

Prehaps what this shows is that that quality of staff and cooking facilties a school has really makes a difference

Which is were the biggest problem with this scheme lies IMO.

All schools are going to need some level of extra staffing to allow them to even keep current standards. If we want things to improve then a lot of schools will need to not only employ more staff but provide them with a lot of training - are they being given money to do that?

Thats without even considering the space issue within the kitchens.

I think it is desperately needed with benefit cuts, zero contract hours, overtime restrictions, higher bills etc. If it means a child does not go hungry through the school day it can only be a good thing.

what saddens me though is the fact that it is needed.

Waaaaay over dramatic,the vast maj of families are able to cut back in other ways,the minority that can't would benefit from the threshold being raised.

We certainly don't "desperately need it". When DD goes to school, we will be much better off as we won't have to pay thousands in nursery fees. We definitely don't need or deserve a £400 universal benefit when there will be children in years 3-6 going hungry or children in DD's class who don't get breakfast.

yes, definitely!
but if they are prepared well, and regulated from outside inspectors like an OFSTED report... so it's not sausage rolls and fish and chips.

What breatheslowly said - we don't desperately need it here either, and think that money would be better spent trying to improve things for those that actually do need it in the later years where, arguably, it gets even more important to provide good nutrition.

DH told me that his school provides free breakfasts to all exam students at exam time, and the difference it makes is amazing. I think free breakfasts for those that want to sign up would be a fantastic thing - such an important meal, and would help to catch those who can't afford decent meals and those whose parents have no time/inclination to provide them...as have been discussed up thread.

me& my partner both work, but with 3 lo we couldnt afford the costs of school dinners so this is great for us we know that in the winter monthes at least they will be having something warm in the day to eat.
its about time that its not only the people who dont work that could do with the help.

I think the lack of kitchens and facilities thing being bandied about is a complete red herring. Back in the days when many children had school lunches, there were proper kitchens in every school. There hasn't been such an extensive programme of new school building that most schools do not still have the space for proper kitchens- and reinstating them is a positive as it will force schools to get away from the reliance on reheating bought in crap pre-prepared meals.

If every single school in most European countries can manage to provide nutritious lunches to most of their pupils I see no reason why England can't.

I know of at least 3 local schools where the meals aren't even cooked on site let alone having their own kitchen.

Even if the kitchen is physically big enough to prepare the extra meals where is the money coming from for the extra staff?

I am mystified why a school would presume when planning its kitchen facilities that only 50% (say) of its pupils would be having school lunches. What would they do if by some random chance 100% suddenly decided of their own accord to have them? Turn kids away?

And where the jeff do the children eat their packed lunches if the facilities are inadequate for the entire year group?

Search MN and u will find that kids are eating in playgrounds, class rooms, and in the floor in corridors.

Furthermore I don't actually think that schools should feel able to opt out of providing decent nutritious food to their pupils nor the space in which to eat them- eating meals together is a valuable part of the school day and the communal experience. I once worked in a secondary school that was undergoing total remodelling- one of the underpinning principles of the remodellling was that all the children from a year group should be able to fit into the canteen together and sit down at the same time. It really worked in promoting cohesion and making the pupils feel treated like people. I've had no contact with mainstream state primary school since 2001 and feel really sad for pupils of schools where lunchtime is treated as an inevitable annoyance and a problem to be handled logistically rather than highlight of the day.

That is very sad and totally not right imo!

I had children in state infant school between 1997 and 2003 and they definitely still had the facilities to cook the meals ten years ago. So has this happened in the last 10 years?

i went to primary school from 88-95 and they couldn't have cooked meals for all then (even the exceptionally poor meals on offer). schools will know the local patterns of how many generally have meals and how many bring packed lunches so that will be what they are planned on not planning on being able to provide for all because that would be a massive waste of resources.

My nephew has just started at primary school and over half of his year group of 45 have packed lunches, assuming similar for the whole of KS1 then you would be looking at next year asking that school to suddenly double the number of meals it prepares for KS1/FS if everyone takes up the free meal. If they extend it for the whole school that issue will get even bigger.

They have space for everyone to eat (in shifts as you would expect in a school) but they certainly won't have the facilities to suddenly double the amount of meals UNLESS the goverment is going to provide them with more equiptment and more suitably trained staff.