Free school lunches for infants - what do you think?

[KateSMumsnet]

Starting this month, in accordance with plans announced last year, all pupils in English primary schools up to the end of Year 2 will be eligible to receive free school meals.

How do you feel about the changes? Is it money well-spent, or could the funds be put to better, more targeted use? Has your school had to make any changes such as building new rooms or using classrooms? Are you glad to have lunches taken care of, or would you prefer to make your child's lunch? Have you seen the new menus, and are you happy with them? Will any of you be opting out?

We'd love to hear what you think - do let us know below. And keep your eyes peeled for a guest post on the nutritional value of school meals, coming later this week.

p.s For those of you still making a pack-up every morning, try out this recipe for the perfect lunch box bars (you can still make them even if your DC are at Uni, we won't tell)

The reason children don't perform well at school is probably because their exhausted parents come home late after long hours at (underpaid) work and just haven't got time or energy to help them with their school work, read for 15 minutes etc etc.

I think its a waste of money. My DS should get them but he doesn't like anything on the menu (a very fussy eater) so takes sandwiches. At least if I send him with a packed lunch I know what he has eaten during the day.

It would also have been a nightmare at dinner if I only offered him a sandwich while we all ate lasagne on the basis he had already eaten a cooked dinner that day. 2 cooked meals really isn't going to help any attempt to cut obesity in schools.

It should have stayed the same as it was. It worked well enough just maybe offered the schools more money to provide a better menu for the children who do have school meals.

I am a dinnerlady working for the company that provides the hot meals in our area. Lets just say I have had a very busy day at work today! Can't say too much about it all on here but we've gone from feeding about 40 kids to possible 180 depending on uptake. Even the glamorous head looked a bit hot by the end of lunch.

I am a dinnerlady working for the company that provides the hot meals in our area. Lets just say I have had a very busy day at work today! Can't say too much about it all on here but we've gone from feeding about 40 kids to possible 180 depending on uptake. Even the glamorous head looked a bit hot by the end of lunch.

For all those who seem to believe this is a vanity project of Nick Cleggs it is in fact a Labour Party initiative. Clegg is just the messenger ...

Not keen here simply because of the quality of food served. I would rather send my DC in with food I am happy with in terms of nutrition and quality BuT I am concerned DC will be a bit singled out. I have heard that the schools put pressure on you to conform.

So, I am not happy with this nannying policy. I wish the government would bloomin well let me decide what is best for my kids.

I don't think anyone on this thread - from either the pro or anti camp - has accused Clegg of original thought, to be fair....

DD has come home today to say she had sausage roll and veg for lunch, ice cream for pudding. It all just sounds a bit cheap tbh. The previous two years we have paid for her school meals and I don't recall her having a sausage roll for lunch.

I think the way forward should have been to make school lunches more comparable in terms of cost. I agree that a pack up can be made much more cheaply than £10 per week, but I would question whether it can be done for under £5 a week. So perhaps they should have charged £1 per day for school lunches instead of £2 and instead of making them free for all.

As an aside point, all of DD's class has school lunches today. This must be at least a 60% increase, probably more.

No Raven it's a shame to let facts get in the way of opinion

Roses, you say two cooked meals a day won't do anything for obesity. I came from a poor family and we had a cooked meal every evening, as well as the school dinners.

We were all slim, as were the vast majority of my contempories. What my family did not have was pudding after a meal, any biscuits or soft drinks. This was not that unusual.

It's a complete waste of money. They should have just increased the existing threshold for free school meals, so that more lower income people were entitled to them.

Clegg has pushed for it and infers it's a Libdem policy.

It's a fantastic idea. The government did proper pilots and they showed this intervention had more effect than any other. It's not just about household incomes, it shows a clear impact of shared society. The kids eat the same thing, together. Great!
I was very impressed to hear Nick Clegg talking about it on the radio the other day saying it should be extended to all primary school children. Eating together is a social thing.
When I was in primary school we all sat down together to eat, and were served by the teacher, who supervised eating and manners! We had no idea who was on FSM (maybe I was one of few who weren't?). We must have had a very dynamic head as I am OLD. But it was good. We all ate together and were one community.
I've always thought that proper food was part of schooling (I was brought up in an incredibly poor part of the country) and I'm delighted that this has been introduced.
As parents we need to stop kicking Nick Clegg for bringing in a truly egalitarian measure, just as people derided Chancellor Gordon Brown for his "nanny state" tax credits. These have both been great moves to give more kids a chance, and both with a strong evidence base.

He's seven years too late to claim credit for the idea SeagullsAndSand

Well he's doing it,pushing for it and planning on extending it.

Hattiesburg tax credits prop up crap salaries,personally I'd rather they were abolished and companies forced to,pay a decent wage.

2007 in the pilot areas all primary school children (R- Y6) were entitled to free school meals so he has in fact reduced entitlement.

But, Hattisburg, unless packed lunches are banned, pupils still will not all be eating the same foods together.

I, too, went to a school where teaching staff and pupils ate together, and teaching staff supervised meals (and playtime) together with dinner ladies. In my school pack lunches were not allowed, and we handed in our dinner money at registration on Mondays. We still had no idea who took FSM unless the child or parents chose to say so.

I do not understand the rationale behind this initiative.

The rationale is that research shows it improves academic performance significantly, especially for those at lower income levels, while extending FSM provision by increasing the threshold for qualifying does not.

well, yes, BoomBoomsCousin that sounds a plan. Evidence based entitlement!

There hasn't been much info on exactly HOW it will run in schools in practice as from this term, so that's been quite confusing for a lot of parents I think... I bet lots of parents will send in a packed lunch to avoid their DC being caught up in queue chaos!

Sample menus for DD's school are a mixed bag, too much "beige food" (chicken nuggets, sausage plait) for my liking. So I think we will end up doing a mix-and-match approach. She'll definitely like the roast dinners!

Having said that, on the whole I think this is a really excellent policy. Jamie Oliver's school dinners TV series/ campaign really highlighted how important nutrition is to learning. I just worry about what happens for poorer families over the school hols when that hot lunch isn't there for the DC each lunchtime. Any one of us could start off fine, and then see circumstances (income and therefore our ability to provide for our kids) change in a heartbeat. I'd like to see better funding for SureStart, HV's and foodbanks as well to support the families most in need.

Not impressed so far, DC came home today having eaten a sandwich, fruit and a cake. I thought the whole point was that they got a cooked meal provided! I was providing sandwiches before, at far less cost to the taxpayer.

BoomBooms, why? How? What is the explanation behind the effect, and why does raising the FSM threshold not have this effect?

And, if the trials showed the effect with KS1 and KS2, why is it only being applied to KS1?

When did they trial raising the fsm threshold?

There are kids in the upper key stages who can't afford food at school,uniform or other essentials.

How on earth does giving wealthy younger kids (who don't need it)free food and older struggling kids nothing help them?

And why exactly should food quality for many be reduced in order to improve that eaten by a few?

It also gets my goat this fsm improves attainment more than any other sheer utter bollocks that Clegg keeps spouting- what more than smaller classes(instead of the groaning huge ones we're currently being faced with), more than having access to the school fields they're selling off,more than decent libraries,more than better resources( which will be reduced due to the need for dipping into budgets to fund this),more than decent buildings,more than money aimed directly at those who need it ......

Suggest you look at the Sutton Trust/Education Endowment Foundation data on raising achievement ... smaller class sizes, teaching assistants, homework, ability grouping etc had low or negative impact