Teachers feeding hungry children

Doesn't it just! Whatever the political stances of those who will, no doubt, criticise the parents or hold the last government or the one before etc. responsible, children must be fed properly. It is their entitlement.

When situations such as this are known to be happening ie children not getting enough to eat why on earth isn't some of the vast amounts of money being spent on things such as The Queen's Jubilee, The Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games being channelled into getting the children fed. I am not opposed to the Jubilee or the Olympic Games, I enjoy both. I do think however that children going hungry should come first in these bad economic times.

Been looking at some of the responses to the article. Quite a few responses wonder why parents can't provide a bowl of cereal and milk, or some toast, or porridge. None of these are expensive. I went right through school having a bowl of cornflakes and milk for breakfast every day. My parents weren't poor, but their parents had been and yet they had always been given breakfast at home too. At least, my dad was until he got into his teens and couldn't be bothered to get up early enough to both eat breakfast and get to school on time. I bet there's still a lot of that going on.

By the way, from when I was eleven and starting secondary school, I got my own breakfast and left the house before my mother even got up. Well, she was drinking coffee (made by dad) and preparing herself to face breakfast with my three younger siblings.

I have a few doubts about the numbers quoted in the article. I fully agree that children need breakfast.

I agree with Bags I'm doubtful that these children aren't given breakfast through lack of money. Even the poorest people on benefits etc can afford toast and marg for breakfast, many supermarkets do their own brand of cereal for under a pound. It could be the fact that Mum hasn't bothered to get up in time. A lot of children nowadays aren't as resourceful as Bags was in getting their own meal.Especially if they are still in primary school. As for lunch money - I thought there was a free meal for children whose parents were on a particular benefit. Or has this been stopped. I went to a state school for the last 2 years of schooling here and I used to keep my lunch money to spend at our local Youth Club and other activities. I'd take an apple and a few biscuits telling my mother that it was for elevenses.

Oh, I wasn't 'resourceful'! I was taught how to get my own breakfast at an early age and told to get on with it. I did. So did my siblings. I remember my youngest brother aged ten making Readybrek porridge for himself. I remember it clearly because he had had peritonitis and was terribly thin after the illness, but the bowl of porridge he had was ENORMOUS! He got warmer and warmer as he ate it too.

The thing is, my parents not only provided breakfast food, but also taught some early elements of how to be independent. In other words, they did their job as parents properly.

My Father was disabled and as there were not the benefits then as today money was very tight but we always had breakfast, usually porridge, free school lunch and a cooked meal in the evening. I would like to know what the budget is of these families. I'm not saying it isn't difficult for a lot of families but find it hard to believe they cannot give their children a bowl of porridge in the mornings.

They probably smoke as well!

There is a case for parent education. Schools which feel they have to provide a breakfast club could usefully set up informal courses on nutrition and cookery. I feel sure that there is more ignorance than negligence. I am also fairly sure that these are the same mums that I see with small children consuming bags of crisps (and, in one case, quite a large pork pie!) in their buggies. How much porridge could you make for the cost of a bag of crisps?

There are still free school meals and many schools run a breakfast service. FSMs are not what any of us would call filling. More like a light snack if you are a teenager. More like a light snack if you are me actually - I have tried them.
When I was a teacher at least the hungriest kids could get seconds and a full stomach once in the day.
It is easy to blame the parents instead of the system. Specially if one has never lived on a depressing council estate on miserable benefits while juggling with other major problems like an inability to get work, mental or physical illness or being forced into low paid work with hours that do not work well with getting the kids out of the house and so on. I understand that giving up smoking is very difficult, even if everything else in your life is hunky dory.

Is it time to re-introduce free school milk? My dad was unemployed in the 30s There were no school meals in primary school(went home for lunch) but l loved my daily bottle of milk. Always had porridge for breakfast -and still do.It sets me up for the day.

Pork pies are good food. A child with a pork pie in its belly isn't going to feel hungry and not be able to concentrate at school.

I think jess's point that people on low incomes (and with rotten jobs) or people unable to get work who are on benefits, often suffer from depression as a result of feeling useless to their society. It's no wonder if, indirectly, their children suffer too. I wonder where along the way we lost that together feeling that seems to have grown up during and after the war, and where along the way government forgot that the nation's children are the nation's futue work force and need nurturing properly, which would include helping their parents out of depression.

There are multiple explanations but if a child is hungry he can't wait for legislation or parental education to take effect. Here in the southwest, an area of high unemployment and deprivation, teachers organised for over 900 children to indirectly receive vouchers for a voluntary organised food bank last year. Big Society, but not acceptable.

We always had a packet of cereal in the staff room for kids who came to school and obviously had not had breakfast. I have given my lunch items to children who were hungry. It was not a rare occurrence even in Kingston! I agree that sometimes it is bad financial management, poor prioritising etc of parent but if there is a child in school who is very hungry it needs feeding. I think the figures are probably about right.
It is dreadful that in our comparatively wealthy country that any child should be hungry. I think the lack of family /generational support has been lost for many women, maybe as far back as 70's, so there are 2-3 generations now who have not had a good model of 'housekeeping' & 'mothering' and a few parenting classes are not going to fill that gap!

I can remember my childrens' primary school there were always children who arrived at the last minute or even late. Always the same children, these were the ones who didn't have breakfast as the whole family preferred to sleep in rather then get up earlier and have breakfast. My daughter used to say these kids are the contents of their lunchbox at break and would have little left at lunchtime so mooched from the other children. In the end all lunchboxes were removed until lunchtime to stop this. This was a fairly affluent area no council estates etc. Just lazy parents.

but not the kids fault..they did not choose their parents! As I got more experience (as a person and a professional!) I did challenge parents whose kids were not fed and sometimes discovered all kinds of terrible issues that needed professional help but other times found it was parents either unable or unwilling to get themselves properly organised. As a school we phoned one mum every day at 8:00 to remind her to start coming to school. She suffered from OCD and had to go through a series of actions before she could leave the home. our prompt helped her to start her routine so the kids were not so late!

I do agree that all children need breakfast but wonder if providing it for them instead of expecting their parents to do so is just encouraging the welfare dependancy?

I have a friend who receives tax credits so presumably does not earn enough to keep her family but her 2 teenage girls are well fed and have a good life with occassional days out and campling holidays. If she can do it, why can't others?

Maybe we should take a harder line on parents' responsibilites and make them look after their own children? After all if you are a drug addict and don't look after them they are taken away from you. Maybe such a threat would make them sit up and take notice. I know this sounds hard and is going to upset some of you but I really don't believe throwing money at every situation is going to change things.

AlisonMA they can't all do it because everyone is so different and has different life experience etc!

If you don't know how to manage and plan spending a very limited budget, and believe me there are people who don't, punishing the kids is not really going to help!

I totally agree parents should take responsibility for their children but until there is a parenting exam prior to having a baby there will be families who fail their children deliberately, accidently or through inadequacy. Different actions needed for different circumstances.

Feeding children shouldn't be an educational requirement, it's the parents responsibility surely. Perhaps the parents need educating

Lunchboxes - I have seen children with "lunch boxes" that contain a couple of chocolate biscuits!
Interesting isn't it that the country afforded proper, filling school dinners when it was very much poorer than it is now. I was visualising my own school dinners which although not well cooked were substantial. Now you get something like one baked potato with a filling and a flapjack (puddings compulsory under FSM)
Or a miserable slice of pizza and a salad.

Nanaej Perhaps parents who fail their children should be made to go to classes so they learn to cope. They will never learn if the state takes over their role for them.

I have to say that no one taught me to cook or to manage money but we have gone through times when we were desperately hard up and I got on and learned. It is just common sense but then that is not very common!

Just for the record, school lunches at DDs Scottish state primary school are extremely good. The HT eats them as well. I'm getting just a tiny bit tired of people saying school dinners are bad. Some school dinners are bad, no doubt, but not all. Please don't tar them all with the same brush.

A baked potato with a cheese filling (say) and a flapjack sounds pretty filling to me, depending on the size of the potato. Perhaps not perfectly balanced, but certainly filling.

As for the kids who only have two choc biscuits – it could be because that's all they'll eat and parents have discovered this over time and don't want to 'waste' other food on them which will only come back home uneaten, or it could be that they've eaten the rest already at morning break. I've come across both scenarios. One of my good friends at secondary school used to bring sandwiches. She was always dieting (and always hungry). She used to eat the sandwich fillings and give the bread to me at morning break. Then she would have nothing, or not much, at lunch time and I would have a school dinner. I'm pretty sure all of this and more still goes on.

The school dinners I had in the sixties and seventies were fine. Well cooked and good straight forward food. No complaints from me.

Sorry. Back to thread. Just trying to chuck in some balance. I'm sure plenty of kids are perfectly well fed on school food.

DD is at the moment on a course called Family and School Together (FAST) and she along with 4 other volunteers are holding classes for mums to show them how to budget and shop for best results,the course has been going only 4 weeks and is a 3 month course on Monday of this week there where only 5 women and 1 man at the meeting out of the original 12 who started,so what ever help you give some families they don't seem able to keep it up,there is no problem with child care when the sessions take place as a childrens club is set up and the staff provide them with a meal cooked by the members,if things don't improve they could loose the funding.

Stony ground, eh, glam? How sad that the course is not more aprreciated, but it's often the case that the people who stick at things are not the ones who need it most. Hope things do improve for your DD and her course.