No lunch at school

[TowerTower]

Do some parents not feed their kids at school? My son says a lot of the kids keep asking him to buy them food and some he has said hes never seen them getting lunch ever and you might say oh maybe they are not hungry but these are the same kids that are asking him to get them food so they obviously are hungry. Is this common in secondary schools for parents to not provide their child with a lunch? I am by no means rich but surely feeding your child is a priority?

I get the impression that the OP doesn’t actually want to do anything except get loads of people on here slagging off the parents.

I had a child in year 5 who was packed a lunch every day but binned it as they preferred the cafeteria stuff and there was always a friend willing to pay with their meal card.
A parent complained and I spoke to the child's parent. They didn't want her eating the crap in the cafeteria (hence the packed lunch) but felt under pressure then to get her a card out of embarrassment that she was scabbing off others.
It's not always about neglect.

Yes I think this is a pretty common attitude. School lunch choices are pretty poor and unhealthy. My app suggests one of my daughters usually gets pizza slice, crisps, chocolate, etc. Luckily only twice a week.

I had to actively stop my daughter buying people lunch with her card. Some kids would far rather cafeteria crap than whatever they have brought with them. In secondary your son will not be with them all the time, closely watching if they eat or not. Whilst there are obviously some parents who are unable for whatever reason to provide lunch, the school is usually aware because there are other factors involved. I feel like you just want us to judge other parents for being crap but in this case it’s highly unlikely large groups of children (who the school is not aware of) have absolutely no lunch.

Lots of the kids take packed lunches in our school. There isn't enough time or space for everyone to have a school dinner anyway.

I'm astounded that children are too embarrassed to eat a packed lunch. Cafeteria food is mostly pizza, sausage rolls and cartons of pasta. Only the ones who get FSMs seem to have an actual meal.

Yes, our app also tells us exactly what they purchased. And both the tutor and head of year told all parents during the introduction that a) the canteen is a money making private business and that b) we should be checking up on their diet and monitoring their sugar intake and that a well balanced packed lunch can be preferable. It is a common joke how all the year 7s go nuts buying sugary stuff in the first term and then beg their parents for more nutritious meals. Especially those doing lots of sport and needing their protein upped.

Maybe the parents don’t have a spare £3 a day or whatever is the cost so £15 a week £60 a month so tell them to make a packed lunch

We used to live on a walking route to a secondary with a corner shop a few doors down.
Loads of kids would either eat their lunch on the way to school or buy pasties, rustler burgers and other such crap and eat that on the way to school. I was forever emailing school as the path was always littered with crusts, discarded cucumbers or tomatoes and wrappers. One kid repeatedly threw a banana and an apple in our front garden for weeks until DH was home and caught him in the act.
Probably the same kids who are blagging mates to buy them lunch as they have eaten it all.

I'd guess there are many reasons why children don't have lunch/dinner money:

-they are being neglected by their parents and no food or money for lunch is provided
-their parents told them to pack their own lunch and they couldn't be bothered
-they are living in poverty and their parents either don't know what help is available or are too proud to take it
-they ate their packed lunch earlier in the day (your son cannot possibly monitor whether this happened 100% of the time)
-they opt for money and keep it to spend on alcohol at the weekend (which is why I didn't always have lunch)

It does seem odd that your son is being asked to buy food for others on multiple occasions though. A one of request from a friend, or requests from a single student that is going through a tough time but really trusts your son would be understandable. But lots of requests from different kids is odd. Maybe have a chat with him to check he isn't being bullied?

No it’s absolutely not normal, so there is either a massive safeguarding concern going on here, or the kids in particular are not managing the parent pay funds correctly, impossible to know without the child being asked, which I’d be inclined to encourage your son to ask the question, if a child is being neglected you have a duty of care to try and help.

I work at a secondary school in a highly deprived area - lots of parents on low income jobs or benefits. I very rarely see kids with literally no food or options for dinner. Most of them get FSM but end up spending their budget on break so don’t have much at lunch. Also loads of them spend any spare cash their parents have given them at the shop on the way to school, usually on bottles of boost. Having worked with lots of poor and struggling families, genuinely very few who have no interest in ensuring their kids can eat during the day. Most likely the kids are pulling a fast one and saving their own budget or can’t be arsed to queue.

I worked in a secondary school it was noted if kids were buying for other kids by staff at breaks and lunch times as it would be a safeguarding concern. Staff are aware to look out for this including kids sharing their packed lunches. School had a policy to lend to a child in certain circumstances so no child went hungry. Your child might be kind but unless it’s a one off sadly kids can take advantage if they know certain kids have access to lots of money on their lunch accounts.

So you want taxes to go up even more to pay for that? I don’t.

It’s a common type of begging/bullying in secondary schools. If they’re on free schools meals, they’ll automatically get money put on their cards.

My mum used to forget to give us dinner money sometimes and wouldn’t always give us enough. She determined that the dinner ticket amount that free school meals children had was enough to buy lunch. You couldn’t buy a whole meal with it. Maybe a hot dog or portion of chips at most.

There are many kids who don’t qualify for free school meals but whose parents don’t have money to pay for them, especially single parents.

sometimes the milkman didn’t come I didn’t have breakfast too.

I used to also save my dinner money to buy things as I don’t get pocket money and I only had things for Christmas and birthday so sometimes it was my fault.

Not quite the same problem but my DS kept spending money on the lunch account at school despite me providing him with a packed lunch. When I emailed the school, they said I could ask them not to provide meals with the caveat that if he asked, they were legally bound to provide the set meal for the day. He couldn’t buy snacks etc or a pudding but they would a meal for the day because of children going hungry. Obviously the parent still has to pay so I wonder whether the parent has told them not to spend any money because they can’t afford it?

This was me too. My dinner money was the only money I had access to so I would not eat and save it up so that I could buy things that all my friends could buy, like CDs and lipstick! I’d rather have been hungry than socially ostracised!

This is really unfair on your son, do you think it’s a type of bullying or seeing him as a ‘soft touch’?
If he can’t deal with telling them no/stop asking then contact school and let them deal with it.

IME it just means they don’t fancy what’s on offer from home and think what’s on offer via your son is much more attractive

Agreed

But it’s not a legal requirement to be at school? Any child can be deregistered at any point. The only legal requirement is that the child receives an education.

It is a legal requirement for children to be educated. Parents can choose state, private, homeschooling, online school, tutors or boarding school in a country of their choice. No one is insisting they have to be in the school all day if the parents have organised alternative provision.

If it’s happening often I think it needs to be raised with the school.
My friend is a teacher (primary) and has had some poor children come in without any lunch. One got caught stealing from other children’s lunch boxes, another was sharing lunch with his friend every day and the friend asked his mum to make extra for him ☹️.

There is no way they can spend an entire week’s food allowance in one day.

Quote a few pupils would say they hadn't had time for lunch. On further investigation it transpired that they had chosen to play football over getting something to eat. On the odd occasion not eating was down to them not having any credit in their account they were given food anyway and their account went into debit.