School Meals
Children who wish to stay for dinner, may either have a school meal or bring a packed lunch. However, they must do one or other during the course of one week; therefore, if they have school dinner they must have dinner every day of that week, and the same for packed lunch. They may change on a daily basis between home dinner and packed lunch, as this does not affect the school kitchens.
Our school meals are provided by Gateshead Council’s School Catering Service. As a school we subsidise the cost of your child’s meals; however, with the current funding crisis in school we are finding it increasingly difficult to maintain the levels of subsidy. The cost of a school meal is currently £2.90 per day, that is £14.50 per week. Payment should be made using the School Gateway app.
School uses a cashless system for dinner money. Payment should be made on line each Monday morning, using the School Gateway App. Access codes for registering for online payments will be issued by the school office.
Children who go home for dinner must go home, and should not return to school until 12.55 p.m. Children are not allowed to leave school premises during the lunch break unless they are home dinners, or are being collected by parents for a medical appointment.
Application forms for free schools meals are obtainable from, and returnable to, the Civic Centre.
The school reserves the right at any time to withdraw the privilege of staying for school dinner if a child’s behaviour is not in keeping with the school rules. At dinner time, children are expected to behave for the lunchtime assistants; if this is abused, parents will be consulted about their child’s behaviour, and subsequent action taken. Hopefully this should never happen.
PACKED LUNCHES
We regularly qualify for the Healthy School Award, which demonstrates our commitment to the all-round well-being of our pupils.
We recognise pupils who are good role models in the content of their packed lunches through our Healthy Packed lunch award. This is given when the content of a packed lunch is nutritionally balanced.
Please ensure that children do not bring fizzy drinks in their packed lunch.
Allergies
We have a small number of children at school who have food allergies and they have Health Care plans completed once the allergy has been diagnosed. Most severe allergic reactions are the result of ingestion but other reactions can be triggered by touching surfaces, such as computer keyboards or books if these surfaces have previously been used by someone who has eaten nut products.
Nuts and seeds are part of a healthy diet for those without chronic allergy, but we would appreciate that pupils eat such snacks at home rather than bring them into school. Therefore we would ask all parents not to provide pupils with school snacks for break time or in packed lunches which include nuts/sesame seeds or products made from these.