School Dinner Ladies

Valli

PolishBigSpender wrote: »

A friend in the UK was just telling me a story about "Nazi" dinner ladies trying to make her daughter's life a living hell. Stories about her child being forced to eat rubbish like cottage pie, emotional blackmail being used (against a 7 year old!), shouting and confiscating things from her daughter's lunchbox have been told to me.

So this child is having a school dinner (cottage pie?) AND a packed lunch?

:rotfl:

Person_one

balletshoes wrote: »

but that doesn't mean they all will, as you said yourself, academies have the choice.

That's the problem though, better isn't usually cheaper, and before the opt out was introduced all schools had to follow a series of guidelines on the health of their food. Now only some do, as I said, its just my opinion, but I really do think its a step backwards in tackling childhood obesity.

pigpen

nickyhutch wrote: »

You see the irony there, don't you?

There is none at all, it is all in the tone it is presented in.. I know her fairly well, she has 2 children at the school and we spent 5 years at the same playgroups and 6 at the same school. If anyone screamed at my children in that manner they would be getting it right back at them.. I don't scream at the like that so neither will anyone else... I can, I just possess the self control not to.

The crazy thing is, is someone did the same to their children they would be up in arms about it.

balletshoes

Person_one wrote: »

That's the problem though, better isn't usually cheaper, and before the opt out was introduced all schools had to follow a series of guidelines on the health of their food.

Now only some do, as I said, its just my opinion, but I really do think its a step backwards in tackling childhood obesity.

I don't disagree with that - but I think theres far more to it generally where academies are concerned. Because they are in competition with other schools to attract pupils (again, I can only go by what I see in my neighbourhood) they want to be at least on a par, and striving to exceed, what the state schools are achieving, in both academic results and pastoral/social care.

ska_lover

PolishBigSpender wrote: »

A friend in the UK was just telling me a story about "Nazi" dinner ladies trying to make her daughter's life a living hell. Stories about her child being forced to eat rubbish like cottage pie, emotional blackmail being used (against a 7 year old!), shouting and confiscating things from her daughter's lunchbox have been told to me.

Apparently these women (why no men?) are very uncivilised individuals.

Is this normal?

I am not sure about the school dinner ladies, sound very unreasonable to me. Cottage pie is deemed as a 'good' dinner in this house, plenty of veg etc, not a rubbish one. Ps im not a dinner lady haha

jellyhead

PolishBigSpender wrote: »

A friend in the UK was just telling me a story about "Nazi" dinner ladies trying to make her daughter's life a living hell. Stories about her child being forced to eat rubbish like cottage pie, emotional blackmail being used (against a 7 year old!), shouting and confiscating things from her daughter's lunchbox have been told to me.

Apparently these women (why no men?) are very uncivilised individuals.

Is this normal?

Have the parents been given a guide to what sort of things are likely to be confiscated from a lunchbox? What about a menu for what the school meals will be?

PolishBigSpender

balletshoes wrote: »

OP what happens where you are?

Generally speaking, because of the culture (we don't have lunch, rather breakfast first thing in the morning, a "second breakfast" that would be similar to your packed lunches and then dinner eaten at home) - it's impossible to compare with hot food offerings as not every school will even have the facility to offer it.

But no-one in schools would care about what children bring to school to eat. One important cultural difference could be that fresh fruit and vegetables are much cheaper to buy than processed rubbish, however - and there isn't anywhere near the same obesity problem.

I'm more surprised that these "dinner ladies" wield so much power despite it being a job that doesn't require any particular skills or knowledge. As someone says above, it's unlikely that they have any knowledge of nutrition - so why would anyone obey their decisions?

A question : how common is it for private companies to operate school kitchens, and does this lead to problems?

Spendless

When my son's Secondary changed to an Academy we were told there were several different types, some were Academies because they'd been in special measures, and had closed down as X school and become Y school Academy. Some had to go into a 'consortium' with other schools to become Academies, some had links to other schools and some could only become one if they had good enough Ofsted reports. The problem is they all use the word 'Academy' so you have to know an area/school well to know which category they fit into.

I worked for 6 months as a dinner lady in a Primary school. Bags of crisps weren't unusual as a daily packed lunch item, but not everyone did it. Slabs of chocolate occassionally were packed too, the size you'd pay over £1 for in a shop. The supervisor was often onto the kids to get a move on eating up. Observed by a parent, they may well have considered her snappy, as they'd take into account their own child's 'quirks' which might be being a slow eater. The supervisor though had to get a few hundred children thru the canteen door and have eaten a meal in just over an hour. There'd have been plenty of complaints from the teachers (and the parents) if children were missing their lessons due to still eating their meal. A lot of them natter during the meal, which is fine. They are not meant to sit in silence, but it can be an issue if they are talking and not eating, holding up a place at the table for another child and making the allocated lunch break over-run.

jellyhead

Fruit and veg is much cheaper in the markets or greengrocers here than it is in supermarkets. I don't have anything to do on a Tuesday so I mooch around town, and today I bought a punnet of blueberries and a punnet of strawberries for 50p each. They'd probably have been £2 each in Tesco! Grapes are cheap - I bet it would be cheaper to sling some grapes into a sandwich bag than to provide a bag of crisps or a chocolate bar.

I appreciate that most parents don't get an entire weekday to just mooch around though. But supermarkets sell those little bags of sliced apple, etc. for less than the cost of a bag of crisps too.

TeresaO

Hi,
sorry a bit of an epic. please don't shoot me, but I'm a dinner lady, well lunch supervisor actually. I help supervise school dinner children and packed lunch children.

It's my job to encourage the children to eat some or all of their lunch, at least to try it.

School dinners can be a bit hit and miss, you need to read the menus issued by the provider. Some of the meals are great, others aren't, but that's a whole thread in itself. You also have to remember peer pressure, if A doesn't like cottage pie then B,C, and D follow suit and won't have it, but thats not what they tell their parents. We do our best to make sure that everyone has eaten something, believe me that's not as easy as it sounds.

Packed lunches, You would be amazed at the numbers of children with packed lunch that claim they don't like this or that in their lunch box.
You get children with too much food, not enough/inappropriate food, children who try swapping with their mates or just plain drop it on the floor or try and bin it.

Dinner supervisors get the short stick, our ratio is higher, the children are hungry, needing to get out and wanting to spend time with their friends, and they take it out on us. No we're not teachers, but we still deserve respect and not be shouted at, hit or ignored.
Oh and yes often information isn't passed onto us, but that's just down to poor management.

When someone comes up with a harmonius canteen where there's no waste, give me a shout, I'll work there. Until then I plod on cajoing, encouraging, coaxing,persuading the children in my care to eat something at lunch time.

T

Ps don't get me started on drinks.