How long is your child's lunch break?

maman

It'll vary hugely depending on the facilities the school has, the timings of the school day and the age of the child.


Many children don't finish their school lunch and it's often nothing to do with having no time. Some don't fancy eating much more than the pudding part and certainly not the crusts on sandwiches others just eat a minimum and rush out to play. Some parents give children more than they really want. Some eat what's left on the way home.


The only sure way to find out is to ask at the school.

Spendless

My Secondary school aged kids get 40 minutes total.

zagfles

kingfisherblue wrote: »

Year 11 son, 35 minutes and they have to queue as the time is the same for the whole school. My son usually eats at morning break instead, as lunch break doesn't start until 1.05 and school starts at 8.30. He eats his breakfast by 8am, then has a baguette at break, which is 10.45-11.05. He has a snack after school at 3pm.

Yes same here - lunch break starts at about 1.10pm and they often don't get in the canteen till 1.40pm!! It's a ridiculous setup.

Parents including us have complained, but the answer we get is that "studies have shows that children learn better in the morning" - so they try to extend the "morning" till after 1pm and only have one lesson in the afternoon! Genius!

So kids are starving by lunchtime - so they tend to have junk food like chocolate bars or crisps in the morning break to keep them going. Our solution was to give them decent healthy packed lunches and they eat them in morning break at 11.00.

arbrighton

Just wondering why most of the food has to go in the bin?

Money_maker

arbrighton wrote: »

Just wondering why most of the food has to go in the bin?

Cos they dont have a dog or chicken to eat it?

PasturesNew

arbrighton wrote: »

Just wondering why most of the food has to go in the bin?

When I was at school, the plate scrapings were to go for pig swill.

For H&S they can't do anything else with the food they've got left over because it's a different menu tomorrow and they've no room/time to wrap/store it and no way of knowing what they'll have left over, so it must be difficult to continually cycle through a menu that uses yesterday's leftovers.

They'll have a contract with a local pig farmer/similar so it's sold on.

mum2one

DD is at secondary there lunch is 1.30 to 2.05 x

discat11

We had 45 mins when I went to school in the late 70's too.

The only difference with our school dinners is we had the swill AFTER the pigs had left it!

gayleygoo

Thank you all for your replies it's parent-teacher meetings next week, so I'll find out how long lunch breaks are and maybe mention to a teacher that my kids say they haven't enough time. It could well be they do actually get longer and my DD has got it wrong, or maybe they are slow eaters. Or maybe they just don't want to eat the fruit/veg!

I generally consult with them at the start of the week, as to what goes in their lunchboxes. I don't normally put stuff in that I know they don't like because I don't want them to go hungry.

If there is salvageable food, then it gets handed back to them as a snack, but much of the time, the remains are smothered in yoghurt, nutella, banana peel, jam, tinned fruit juice, bits of tuna etc. An apple might have one or two bites out of it and tuna all over the rest! And yep, unfortunately no dog to use as a living bin

flipper_72

KS1 60minutes, - generally each year goes in for 20 minutes, however when DD was there she was sent in with first sitting all the way through as she took ages to eat, (large packed lunch but needed the food intake for energy, skinny kid). DS free school meals, I get the feeling he eats minimal except for fish on Friday, skinny kid but survives on thin air!
KS2 45 mins, different times for Y3/4 and 5/6 so they each get 20ish minutes to eat.
DD regularly used to tell me other kids sat and ate nothing, recently we have been given the opportunity to eat lunch with our children once a year and I can honestly say that loads of kids basically ignore their food for as long as possible so they don't have to eat it, shove it back in their bags and run off to play. I have one who doesn't and one who probably does.