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)

Yes apparently there was no fruit today. Although they pay for it at a little fruit tuck shop there wasn't any so she went from 6:30 with nothing until about one give or take so that's a long time.

I was all for this two weeks ago, thinking it'll push my fussy eater into trying food through peer pressure, save me the hassle of packed lunch as well as the fact that its freeeeee.

We've been back to school a week and now frankly it's a headache. A lot of the meals I make at home like a roast or bolognaise and i've been caught out with dd moaning "i had that at lunch" now I admit i forgot to check the menu. But i made macaroni cheese, she moaned she'd had pasta. I checked the menu it was pizza. She says she was given a scoop of pasta with pizza(?!) and so the weird combinations begin. She's eaten nothing healthier than meat and potato so far as refuses all veg.

The school have now dropped to a one choice menu to plough through the increased amount of children and i'm gradually realising dd would have more balanced nutrition on packed lunches and what a waste of money.

Welcome to the high carb world of school dinners.

Dd2 had pasta, beans'n'cheese followed by a biscuit on Tuesday.

Yesterday she was able to have chicken, veg, mash & fruit salad, so I'm happy with that, although it's a good job she's stopped being vegetarian over the summer, or it would have been quiche & mash.

Today she had cheese pie, gravy, bread (?), sweetcorn & rice pudding.

One of these meals bears some resemblance to the published menu...

Sirzy that's not a good start at all. Roll out appears to have been poorly handled on a lot of levels. But I love this line from the letter sent home to parents by the head of one school:

"I apologise for the inconvenience to your child: it did mean they had a longer lunch break than usual and had a pizza lunch. As I would expect from a St. Luke's pupil they showed great resilience and put up with this hardship."

Headteacher with a sense of humour!

Bare in mind in many schools reception are on half days. The hiccups and time issues occurring could possible get worse when the additional 30/60/90 pupils start full time and are involved in lunvh

My Lea have one of the cheapest school meals in the country its £6.25 /week so my oldest son has/always had them he has just gone into year three my youngest son starts reception tommorow he has special needs so is going to a special school I would have paid for his meals anyway but I,m pleased he gets them free for three years.

If free school meals go the way of free hospital food, the food will, with cost cutting end up disgusting. Those who can afford it will send in packed lunches and those who can't will be stuck with disgusting food.

The money would have been better spent on:-
Raising the threshold at which you qualify for FSM, so more but not all get them ; and
Breakfast clubs.

Just giving a child a substandard lunch is not going to achieve a lot if they have missed breakfast.,

My DD was delighted with her lunch today. She had beef pie with new potatoes, broccoli and cauliflower. The school sent round pictures of the new kitchen and the kids enjoying their meals and it looked delicious with lots of fresh veg. DD was very excited about the whole thing. Admittedly the reception children haven't started yet but it did all seem to run very smoothly.

I would like the op to answer just how social and useful it is when there's an hour to feed for hundred children and give time for a play/run around.

Is telepathy going to become part of curriculum so they can talk while shovelling in food like the Simpson?

Good point with regards to the reception children not being in yet and I would imagine they are going to be very slow to get through the dinner process for the first few weeks at least so that could really add to the issues.

Oops that was meant for the other thread ill C&p it over

As you were

They have a few weeks to iron out the process before the reception children start. Seems like one of the few good things about the policy roll out which otherwise seems to have been hampered by too little preperation and investment.

Some schools are clearly struggling, but ithese are logistics issue that can be solved. It doesn't mean the idea of universal FSM is poor, just that individual schools have poor infrastructure or management. Issues that could hamper many things, not just a lot of children wanting school meals (the fact some schools apparently can't cope with the majority of their students wanting school meals seems like an issue to me, whether or not take up rates are increased by universal FSM).

How though?

I mean whatever you do there's going to be too many kids and too little time. With all the will in the world that won't change.

So they put the pack lunch kids in classrooms and separate them from friends.

Who's supervising?

Have buzzers indicating end of sitting and have someone clear plates?

No they don't. Some schools have reception children starting next week.

Simply put when it comes to feeding children we can't spend time ironing things out. This has been rushed through with no thought for any of the practicalities. Things like lack of space and time can't be ironed out in a few days/weeks/months

It depends on the school Giles. But I think a school that can't feed all its children is in need of some serious rethinking anyway. Is that why school meals haven't kept up with parents expectation of quality - so that take up rates would drop and they simply wouldn't have to bother? I'm not sure why this is seen as so impossible. It used to be the case that the vast majority of children had school meals. Schools coped.

My own childrens' school has universal FSM through Yr6 (paid for by council). They are in an old victorian school with no room to expand, have had bulge classes and other space pressures. They don't have a hall large enough for the whole school to gather in (a seperate issue), let alone eat lunch. But they worked out a way to make it work. It's not perfect, but neither was the fact that so many children before were not getting a lunch of even the (IMO) poor standard of the school meal.

I fall into the category of our income not being low enough to qualify for FSM, however finding an extra £40 per month for school dinners is a struggle sometimes as our income is low. When DS1 was in Infants & wanted a hot lunch I managed to find the money, but its not money lying around unusued, its had to be diverted from the weekly shopping budget or similar. DS is in Yr5 & last year he had to have a packed lunch as DS2 started reception & I cannot find an extra £80 pm for school meals, so DS2 was the smallest & had the hot meal. This year they can both have a hot lunch due to DS2 being in yr1 having it free. Its great & it stops me having to choose which one needs a hot lunch more.

However I do think the money could be spent better elsewhere, in the education sector perhaps or the NHS. We changed schools last year & the old school was in a massively deprived area & the Ofsted report pinpointed it as having more pupils than the national average on FSM. It wasn't a stigma because I'd guess 90% of the children qualified . The new school is leafy & parents are easily able to provide a high quality lunch but they now don't have to. Even though it was a struggle for me I would rather divert the £10 from our weekly shop & let the affluent parents pay for lunches & then be able to get an appointment with my GP without having to wait 2 weeks for example.

I think it's a massive waste of money paying for food for those that can afford it. There will be juniors whose parents are struggling to feed their kids and infants who are receiving free dinners it's all topsy turvey.
If anything the cap at which you receive free school meals should be upped or more money put into swimming lessons or more teaching help in the classroom .
I say this a middle income parent who sits just enough above the income bracket to be able to afford to pack a lunch for my kids but not be able to pay £10 per week per kids on school dinners.

Would much rather have had child benefit, which we've lost. Daughter has some special dietary needs I'm not sure will be met by school lunches. School doesn't have own kitchen so it's frozen stuff shipped in and I think the quality is poor.

Even if we didn't get the child benefit back I'd rather the money went on extra resources for families who are struggling - such as food over the holidays.

One set of veggie friends have a Year 2 aged daughter in an infant school, and Class 3 (her class) of Year 2 were last into the hall yesterday and today (and all next week).

Yesterday the vegetarian option was Quorn sausages and mash, so needless to say, there wasn't much take up from the others for that.

Today it was cheese and tomato pizza.

By the time my friends' DD got to be served, no cheese & tomato pizza left. She was made a cheese salad sandwich.

This is a school that has also made the free meals compulsory.

Only the second day, but friends are going to report back to school, because it goes back to my earlier point (that if schools are making it compulsory, they need to MAKE SURE vegetarian children get left a plate back).

In all the primary schools that my dc have attended (youngest is still in primary) the children have to state their lunch choice at registration. This means that there should always be enough of each option available - in theory. It more-or-less works. When it doesnt, last sittings get double portions of things that the kitchen staff expected to be popular, like chips, and go short on things that the kitchen staff expected to be unpopular, like salad.

I'm not sure you can compare FSM with CB. Theses two benefits have totally different purposes. Also child benefit can be spent or even wasted on anything. I'd rather have FSM

BoomBoomsCousin:

'But I think a school that can't feed all its children is in need of some serious rethinking anyway. Is that why school meals haven't kept up with parents expectation of quality - so that take up rates would drop and they simply wouldn't have to bother?'

It simply hasn't been an expectation in an awfully long time, that any school would provide a cooked meal for the entire student body. No one wanted them to do so.

Many, many families have long preferred to provide a packed lunch for whatever reason. I took sandwiches in the late 70s & early 80s because there wasn't a vegetarian option, for example. My dc take a pack up because for a whole slew of reasons (nutrition/choice/cost/fits in with family eating together in the evening) it's a much better option for us.

This year's political bandwagon seems to be that everyone eating the same cooked lukewarm stodge, whether they like it or not, is a Good Thing. This is not something schools could have reasonably predicted ten years ago when they were being asked to provide three different serveries & a picnic area because Choice was the Good Thing.

You also need to take into account that the demands on school buildings shift constantly. My dc's school has a couple of very well equipped ICT rooms & a soundproofed music room where the kitchen was in its original Victorian incarnation!

Yes, school meal provision is shit. The way to tackle this might be an audit of existing catering facilities & no new school to be opened without a proper kitchen. Existing schools should receive financial incentives to prepare good food on site. The regulation of nutritional standards should be stringently enforced & those standards should be based on what's on the plate not what's on the menu (send no notice inspectors in!). I'd also argue for a free salad bar & fruit for everyone, whether they bring lunch or buy on site.

Then scrap this nonsense of giving a free lunch to the Y2 children of the local millionaire whilst Y3 is full of kids whose parents are really struggling, & just extend the provision of FSM based on circumstances.

After five years of getting the infrastructure sorted, maybe we'd be in a position to roll this policy out effectively, with genuinely good quality food, which would be nice. Not essential IMO, not a priority, but definitely a nice thing to be able to do properly.

When we took part in the original pilot we had the summer holidays to prepare and fed every child in the school with genuinely good quality food.

3 days in the kids like the meals, less stressful for me not having to make packed lunches and a massive money saver. So I'm happy with it. The meals seem to be healthy and balanced which I pick ahead out of a choice of 3 online. Kids don't come out of school proclaiming that they are starving...... only for me to look in their lunch box and find unfinished food. So I think they are having more time to eat hot meals or it's more filling.

On a negative side not sure where's the money is coming from? I also think that parents who can afford it should feed their children should. But i'm happy to accept the free meals for the year that it will probably last.