School Dinners & Healthy Eating

School dinners are provided free of charge to children in the Infants. In Key Staget Two they cost £2.30 per child per day and you will need to pay in advance of taking meals.

To pay for meals you will need to visit our Arbor websiteArbor website.

In the documents below you will find our School Dinner Money Collection Policy.

At Wistaston Church Lane we do our best to encourage healthy eating at break times and lunchtimes.

This is a guide for parents and carers to help them to choose the right foods to send in with their children.

Allergen Information

Please note that nuts, and foods containing nuts, are never allowed in school.

Breaktimes

At breaktimes we offer free fruit to children in the Infants. We also offer a healthy snack bar to children in Key Stage Two.

At breaktimes children should not bring in chocolate bars, crisps or sweets—these are not allowed.

Lunchtimes

Our school caterer, Mellors, offers a nutritional cooked meal each day which meets government guidelines for healthy school dinners. Children in the Infants are entitled to a free school dinner every day. In the Juniors, meals offer good value and convenience for a charge.

Healthy Lunch Box Ideas

Lunch should supply approximately one third of the daily energy requirements your child needs, as well as a third of protein, carbohydrate, fats, fibre, vitamins and minerals.

Try to include:

• One protein rich food, such as fish, meat, eggs, poultry, tofu, pulses/beans or houmous
• One carbohydrate food, such as wholemeal or granary bread, pasta, oatcakes or rice. Try wholemeal/brown ‘complex’ carbohydrates as they release sugar much slower to help give children sustained energy.
• One, preferably two, portions of fresh fruit or dried fruit
• One dairy food or calcium rich food, such as cheese, yoghurt or milk
• One portion of salad or vegetables such as carrot sticks, celery or cherry tomatoes, cucumber or a good amount of salad in a sandwich
• 200-300ml or water or unsweetened fruit juice.

We only allow water, milk or unsweetened fruit juice as a drink. Soft/fizzy drinks are not allowed as they are packed with sugar and often colourings, additives, preservatives and aspartame (a sugar substitute) which can become addictive and affect moods.

Unhealthy Lunch Boxes

Try to avoid processed foods in your child’s lunch box as they are high in sugar, unsaturated fats, salt and often have chemical additives, preservatives, colourings and sugar substitutes that can change children’s behaviour and can prevent them from concentrating.

Drinks in the classroom

Children are encouraged to bring in a reusable water bottle which they can drink throughout the day. Children are encouraged to drink during and after PE lessons. We also have water fountains available around the school.

Further advice can be found here:

https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/eight-tips-for-healthy-eating/

https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/collection/school-lunch

https://www.nhs.uk/change4life/recipes/healthier-lunchboxes

Money comes into schools in different ways. One way that money comes into its central budget is from infant school dinners.

The government pay for children in the infants to have a free meal each day. The money is put into the school budget at the start of September (which we receive monthly). In order to decide how much money to allocate each school they carry out a census in the Autumn and Spring Terms. They work out how many infant children have a dinner on those two days and allocate funds accordingly.

• If a child does not have a dinner on that day but has a dinner every other day of the year, the school would pay for the dinners. This would come out of the school’s central budget.
• If a child has a dinner on that day and has a dinner every other day, or most days, the government would pay for the dinners throughout the year.
• If a child has a dinner on that day but does not have one on any other day of the year, the government will allocate funds to pay for a dinner each day of the year. This money would go into the school’s central budget.

If every child in the infants had a child on the census days then we calculate that this would bring in a small amount of additional money to the school’s central budget and no cost incurred by parents or the school.

We will always highlight this to parents in the run up to census day and we would be grateful if they could bear this in mind.