School Dinner Charges - How are you coping with lunch charges?

NewCustomerOnly

School Dinners are going up again so we're told but typically in a way they hope we don't notice (by making them smaller!) When the coalition government is helping the rich and the rest of us are fighting to keep afloat with mortgage increases,food prices,gas and electric, fuel going up by 3p that we can't afford already - we look around for the last place to scrape a little saving - but surely not on the kids school dinners? or do we? lots of people on the lunch box thread offering money saving tips but I wondered how many of us actually can afford school dinners now? Are most of changing to packed lunches? I'd love to know the official figures - what are things like in your school? And are the portions miniscule? have we been in to actually see what we get for our kids for the money?As for us, we buy quadruple amounts of BOGOFs and just have them til they run out!

cutestkids

I give my kids packed lunches as the muck that they serve up at school dinners is not what I want my kids to be eating, it may be that they have reduced the salt sugar and fat so they are better than a few years ago but the quality of the ingredients is still not good and I prefer to know what they are eating.

At our school a lot of the kids who have dinners are getting them free but even with that more and more people seem to be sending in a packed lunch

milliebear00001

My daughter was desperate to have school dinners, but we couldn't afford to provide them five days a week. We compromise by her having school dinners twice and packed lunch the rest of the time.

Thankfully, my little boy is fussy and will only have his ham sandwiches, so no school dinner costs for him!

newbutold

My kids chop and change between packed lunches and school dinners. However I have noticed that they come out of school starving hungry on the weeks that they have school dinners.

DevilsAdvocate1

My children's school invite parents to pay for a school lunch and come into school to eat it with their child once every term. I was shocked at how small the portions are. My youngest was starving when he came out of school as the portions were so small. However, the year 6 children get exactly the same portion size. So my youngest two are both on packed lunch.

My oldest is on school dinners but he is in secondary and packed lunches don't seem to have any street cred. As he was bullied at first I have let him stick with dinners.

NewCustomerOnly

yes and school dinners could cost £80 per month for two! Cheapskate letdown if dinners are now tiny and kids come out hungry! Now seriously sick of all bad news on costs every day - people have finally run out of places to cut so baaaaaad idea if rumours of smaller dinners are true - families have nothing left they can cut.

poet123

Many schools now actually subsidise their dinners, that is the LEA "sell" them for xxx but cap what the schools can actually charge, so typically there is a net loss to schools of approx 12p per dinner per day, which comes out of school budget. Which in turn means less for other essentials. Schools have to bear the cost because the LEA won't allow then to charge market price.

NewCustomerOnly

that is truly shocking - school dinners are relied upon by many young children who suffer from neglect at home - the LEA s are failing them!

Surely there should be an enquiry - maybe we need Jamie Oliver on this, to lots of us 10 to 29 pouinds a week is a lot of money to put by when there is nothing left to cut in our budgets

rachbc

I do packed lunches because my dd wouldn't eat the stuff they call food. A nice side benefit is that its cheaper so win win

NewCustomerOnly

Yes, surely school dinner charges should be monitored and the school dinners themselves inspected from time to time?

mammyof7

It costs me nearly £80 a week :eek::eek::eek: when all my kids have a school dinner. This consists of £15 per week each for the three oldest, and £10.50 a week each for the three youngest.

Working in schools, I know that sometimes both the quantity and the quality of the food isn't great. In one school the nursery children were allowed to stay for dinner and paid the same as everyone else. I know that small children often have small appetites but the portions that these kids were given was pathetic. Literally a slither of chicken and one potato. I really don't know how the cost could be justified :mad:.

However I feel that my hands are tied where school dinners are concerned. Both myself and my husband are out all day, every day at the minute and making up half a dozen packed lunches daily just isn't an option.