[Vicky.]

Originally Posted by Ammi

...of course food is thrown out from kitchens every single school day, Vicky...and by the head’s own words this rule was only ever designed to punish a child for a parental error...The headteacher said the 'bread and butter' rule was brought in so that children are denied a school lunch whenever a family owes more than £10....the family owes money../..the parent owes money...so the child will be denied a lunch...how is that not Dickensian...if it’s felt that these parents..(...not just the mother..)..are guilty of bad parenting in some way..?...then the primary solution to that from an establishment with a duty of care to children...is to uphold some £10 rule and give the children bread and butter only...(...while food is most definitely being thrown out....)

Thats not quite what the head said though Saying you have a rule for when parents owe money, does not equate punishing kids for the parent being an irresponsible twat. Not in my eyes anyway.

I have never worked in a school dinner hall so have no experience of it, so can only go on what my kids schools say when they explain the lunches. And thats that the kids on dinners (paid or free) put their orders in. Orders are prepared elsewhere and stored. They given in premade trays. The school do not have spare trays, except when a kid leaves school ill in the morning or something. Hell, we have had issues before where even though the forms were filled out for orders 3 weeks back, the school actually 'order them' properly on the day (like, they give a list beforehand so the ingredients and such are there, but the actual food order goes in after morning marks apparently, for paid meals..the free ones are ordered regardless, and as such a kid who had ordered a free meal and was off, their meal would be going spare on that day), so when Skye has been late for various reasons, we have been told to send her with a packed lunch that day as orders have gone in already and there may be nothing for her. Fairly sure if I pushed they would manage to sort something, but I have never tried. But they also do not charge you for that day, obviously.

It all seems so stupid, and just totally backwards. But I can well see if that school is anything like theirs, that there will not be much spare, if any spare. They get in the amount of orders they put in. Sometimes have some flexibility if free meals have been ordered and not eaten though. But theres been a few times that Skyes not liked what she had, and they had nothing to replace it with. They do give her extra fruit in those cases though, as fruit is just in the school and not ordered daily obviously

Also, the school does not have any provisions in place at all for parents who do not pay. But they don't do 'accounts' or whatever like this school must if they have to deal with debt often. Needs paid for at the start of the week/day, and if not, packed lunches must be brought. There is not even a grace day for mistakes, a few times Gavin has took the kids to school and forgot his wallet and had to walk back along to pay for meals! he proper rages, and yes, again, it IS stupid.

It genuinely makes no sense to me, that the orders must be done 3 weeks in advance, yet they seem to not be able to handle the odd lateness due to the way ordering actually works?! But a lot of things about how schools are ran make no sense to me