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)

If this is about equality of opportunity then all children should have either packed lunch or all school meals.

If it is about malnutrition and not getting good food at home then that is a child protection or heath education issue.

If it is about poverty then it is a minimum wage issue. Taxpayers should not be propping up low pay for big businesses taking high profits. If parents prefer to spend their money on a big telly or holidays then we need to fix parenting and health education.

This is one of those sticking plaster policies that's trying to cover the fallout caused by bad government policies. Surely it is more effective to solve the problem at source.

Care to link to where Sutton say fsm for all including the wealthy and that alone will raise attainment for those on pp.

Can't wait to see the sky high results come Xmas.

We'll just park the issue of the hungry kids in ks2 and 3 with no money for uniform and what Unreal said.

I'm not saying it won't help attainment, but I think it is a patch up job and won't deal with the causes of poverty. For many children school is the only place they feel secure and happy, that should not be happening and there needs to be more family support.

I feel that having pilot areas in Durham, Newham an Wolverhampton is not representative of the uk. I suspect that if a pilot was carried out somewhere super wealthy like Surrey then the results of universal fsm would be negligible.

I think if we're going to base the allocations of millions of pounds(which could be put to better use elsewhere ie hungry children)on one study based on a few schools over a couple of years I'd like some assurance that the rest of the nation's kids are going to be getting exactly the same food and amount.

The whole country should be brain boxes if regularly eating cardboard,pizza,wedges and cake improves attainment.

They must be some pizzas they serve up in Durham.

I'm not sure how I feel about them. I'm reserving judgement for now. My school age DC are 8 and 5. Both were on school dinners until October half term last year, paid for as we don't qualify for FSM. They both begged to go on to packed lunches. Since being on them, they very rarely come home hungry asking for something to eat before dinner is ready.
Now only my 5 year old will be having school meals from next week (kitchens are still being upgraded). We have been informed that there is no choice to have packed lunches in KS1 only FSM. Hopefully the portions/quality of the meals will have been improved along with the kitchens.

Unreal I think it is really a poverty and social exclusion issue. But none of our political parties are committed to eradicating poverty. Whereas they all have some commitment to improving education.

Nutrition is a really important part of what makes people clever. IQ tests get revised every year because the population is getting cleverer. I know it doesn't feel that way when you hear teenagers talk sometimes, but every generation thinks that! It isn't true. A 60 year old who scored 100 on an IQ test when they were 20 got less right than a 40 year old who did the same and both got less right than a current 20 year old. Average intelligence by every measure rises year on year. A large part of that is down to improved nutrition, a lot of it prenatal, but nutrition during childhood, especially early years has a huge impact too.

What should be shocking us is that such poor quality food as school meals appear to be has such a dramatic impact on childhood learning. It goes to show how poorly a lot of children must actually be eating that the food my school serves up is so much better than children on average would otherwise eat. I think it is a big indicator that we need to take poverty and marginalization much more seriously in Britain, but that doesn't mean I want to see scrapped one of the few programs that actually has an impact on the growing attainment gap by bringing up the scores of less well off children.

Average intelligence by every measure rises year on year. A large part of that is down to improved nutrition,

I agree with the first part but I think it is more likely to be because of the massive changes in the way we are exposed to information through computers.

Children who previously had extremely limited access to books or just found reading and writing didn't fit their learning styles now have other ways to build their brains. Videos, DIY graphics, DK style encyclopaedias, apps, computer games of all kinds have probably played a far larger part in this. I'm not sure if there is research on this but the general idea is that everyone has their own learning style and up until ten years ago everyone was forced to learn in more or less the same way, taking a book from the shelf and looking things up. That learning style probably only suits a small percentage of people. The advent of computers in homes and schools has meant those children otherwise left behind just aren't. IQ is affected by all kinds of things, intelligence is the sum of neural activity we are only just beginning to understand. My children throw facts back at me in an alarming way and the seem to have done very little work, are not particularly studious but their little sponge brains have been exercised in all the right ways to enable them to take it all in. In some ways I think self-directed use of computers enables children to find their own way of learning and exercising their brains.

But back to the nutrition issue, in the 70s we all had excellent big dinners at school, were forced to eat our greens and I'm pretty sure the 'poor' had a very good diet at home due to convenience foods being more expensive. My daughter doesn't know more than me because she had a better diet, she knows more than me because she had a different type of education. We both went to fairly similar schools, primary and secondary and my input on her learning has been minimal, as was my mother's input was minimal on my learning.

Really- there is an assumption in your post that the majority of children involved in the pilot scheme were poor and thus badly fed. This is unlikely to be the case. I have taught in Newham and the vast majority of the children were as well cared for and well fed as anywhere else. Childhood obesity levels were quite low.

IME some of the worse childhood poverty is hidden in otherwise affluent villages and country towns.

Average intelligence has been rising year on year since long before computers were around. And the poor did not have such great diets in the 70s. Hence the political storm over school milk.

I was at school in the 70s and as I recall the meals were not so great. Portion sizes seemed big to me, but then I was small. We had chips a lot and the meat was most often some form of "mince" which is not so much meat as the bits of the animal which aren't meat, some of which was later banned from the human food chain. Our salads consisted of a piece of lettuce a slice of cucumber and a quater tomato (I remember very clearly thinking how stingy this was at the time!). We were made to eat our greens, but they were boiled to death so not sure what that did for us. Also, there was pudding every day with (disgusting, thick-skinned) custard, no fresh fruit option. Of course every school was different. Just as they are today.

I guess they have gone for KS1 as these are the foundation years for
learning and group interaction.

'Average intelligence rises year on year'.

This doesn't mean that intelligence is rising year on year for ALL children. It could mean that intelligence levels have been rising more for the most advantaged children and not at all for some other groups.

To me giving FSM to children is one of the fairest policies.

Reports from.dd today say that they had a really late lunch as they could only fit one more table in the hall and they had very little time toe at lunch and she was soo hungry she struggled to eat and then her and some friends missed some of a lesson because they werent quick enough eating.

To eat

There were 131036 children involved in the pilots so not a small sample for an evidence base.

giles Is this just teething problems or do you think your DD's school have not been able to manage the changes?

m.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/11453023.Primary_school_pupils_get_takeaway_pizza_for_lunch_as_school_caterer_fails_to_show_up_with_promised_free_meals/

Not a good start!

No idea. But I shall be taking bananas in my bag for her go eat at school . We leave early so with a half six breakfast even a half twelve lunch is a long time between food if that makes sense. She doesn't know what time she ate but she does know she didn't have long to eat which kind of negates the social aspect doesn't it? Ramming food down your throat hoping to make line up. Porridge on menu tomorrow and a banana at the gates

Those aren't exactly huge numbers.

The boy on the radio that gave Cleggie a roasting was saying the percentage point increase of improvement was only 1.9.Given that improvement wasn't seen in the more affluent kids that is hardly a stunning figure.

My dc are now eating lunch at 1.15 because they're KS packed lunches and the lowest priority and lunch time finishes at 1.30.Ds got told off for taking too long,he pointed out he'd only had 15 minutes.

Given that they're only supposed to have a piece of fruit at play and many will have breakfast early that is far too late and not happy with the rush to eat his food.He left his fruit as there was no time to set it.

Will give it a few weeks to bed in but will complain if this happens daily.

I've just been reading about the "boy" on the radio who is apparently an adult

Yeah NC suggested he was.