Free school meals for everyone would penalise those kids who (for whatever reason) bring their own sandwiches. In particular kids with specific dietary requirements be they for cultural or health reasons.
This logic is very flawed; free meals are not "discriminatory".
Do you have a reason for this?
I personally think that they should be free, but they should not be free at the same time. In my school, we have a full restaurant building which is open at break and lunch time, and there is a lot of demand for the food there. Everyone ordering food has to pay with their thumb, and the price is cheap. My theory is that the money is sent off to the company. So I think that school meals should cost a small fee so that the company that runs it can earn money.
However, in my primary school, from memory school dinners were free and there was no idea of paying with a thumb. I don’t think it’s as helpful for the company running the restaurant. This is because if that money was to be used for the services, not having to pay a small fee isn’t helpful, as the theory I have is that the money gets sent to the company. If they were free, it wouldn’t be helpful for the company.
There are a lot of words in this post, but it really doesn't make any sense. I think you're just confused.
Free lunches are already being trialled at schools in York, including the city's largest primary school:
It is the second primary school in York to provide all pupils with a free school meal.
www.bbc.co.uk
The meals will be provided to students at Burton Green Primary as part of the council's plan for York to be "an anti-poverty city within a decade".
It follows the roll-out of
free lunches already given to all pupils at the city's Westfield Primary.
b) it removes any stigma from those currently getting means-tested free meals
There shouldn't be any stigma; generally speaking, kids won't have any way of knowing if other kids get free meals (unless they tell them)
Back in the 1970s there were reports of some schools which did things such as announcing that seconds were available but only for those who had paid, and not for those on free meals....
That's insane. I can't imagine that happening these days, thankfully.
...I suppose one way this could be handled would be for the free meals entitlement for eligible children be paid as an addition to child benefit....
Some parents would perhaps spend it on things for themselves or unhealthy for the kids, so I wouldn't say that's a good idea.
...Children are the responsibility of the parents, not the state. The state should only be involved where parents are defective, not by default for everyone...
Not all children have parents who are as responsible as they should be, but not to the level that you may deem as being "defective" (or, at least, not to the level that they would be taken into care, which is a pretty high bar).
My son has a payment system and pays with his fingerprint. Seems to work pretty well, but I am sure there's a not insignificant cost in having the equipment in the school, managing the payments, the admin and back-end stuff etc.
Yes, such costs can mount up, but they do provide a
very efficient operation; many schools have halved the duration of lunch break as a result.
Also, the thumb system
may (depending on the school) be used for other applications, for example printing, loaning books, access control etc, so the expense of maintaining such as system can have other benefits, beyond catering. For example, take print systems: when I was at school, you pressed "print" and your work was immediately printed, however these days schools can save wastage by requiring kids to authenticate with their thumbs, before releasing the jobs. Not only does this save wasted printouts, but it allows for further savings through the use of fewer, but more economic, printers.
No doubt the company providing this service to the local authority is doing well out of it.
There could be different companies involved; the company providing the food is probably not going to be the same as the company providing the back-office systems (they may be subcontracted by the catering company or may be procured directly by the school). Yes, some companies probably are doing reasonably well out of it, however any company that got too greedy would soon find themselves losing out to another company.
