Clavering Primary School

Adopted by the Governors of Clavering Primary School

Aims

  • To outline the school’s procedures regarding school meals;
  • To work with parents to provide a flexible approach to the lunchtime nutritional needs of our pupils
  • To ensure the smooth, efficient and cost effective operation of the school dinner system
  • To clarify the roles and responsibilities of school staff, parents and pupils
  • To present a workable, fair mechanism for the collection of school dinner money.

Policy

School meals are available to pupils at a cost of £2.85 per day or at no cost to those in receipt of a free meal entitlement.

To enable the service to be efficiently planned the School requires advance notice of your child’s requirements. (Half a terms notice is required to change arrangements).

Paying for school meals.

The payment for meals is required in advance on a weekly, monthly or half-termly basis.

Please click on the link below for instructions on how to access online payment –

Online-Payment-Letter

  • If you are unable to make payments on-line, we still accept cash or cheques to be made payable to Clavering Primary School. If your cheque is returned unpaid you will be charged the relevant banking fee. You may also be charged an administration fee representing 5% of the value of the cheque.

Should a child arrive at school without payment or a packed lunch, the School will telephone home in the first instance to establish if alternative arrangements have been made.

If a child’s entitlement to free school dinners has expired, the parent/carer must provide a packed lunch or make advanced payment for any school meals to be taken.

If payment has not been made

If you are in debt of 1 week’s school dinners, ie £14.25, a reminder letter detailing the amount you owe will be sent home with your child. (Appendix 1). Payment must be made immediately. If payment is not received and the debt increases to 2 week’s, ie £28.50, a second reminder letter will be sent home detailing the consequences of non payment and a final date by which payment must be made (Appendix 2)

If the matter remains unresolved, you will be sent a 3rd and final letter requesting payment and detailing the school’s next course of action. (Appendix 3)

The school cannot tolerate debt amounting to more than one week’s payment.  If debts are incurred, the school budget has to pay for them. This means that money which should be spent on the children’s education is used to pay for debts incurred by parents.  If a parent repeatedly fails to provide a packed lunch, or sufficient monies to cover the cost of school meals, there may be a referral to Social Services as this has an affect on a pupil’s welfare.

The school is not obliged to provide a school dinner where payment is not forthcoming or where authorisation for free school meals has not been received and some schools are known not to provide a meal in these circumstances. We will therefore act promptly to address such issues at an early stage, in order to prevent arrears of dinner monies from accumulating to a point beyond parent’s means to settle.

The school will in exceptional circumstances postpone the refusal to provide meals where parents have advised the school of their financial situation and the school is satisfied that the funding will be forthcoming.

The school will work closely with parents in working out a form of payment plan to help resolve the situation if requested by the parent. However, where no attempt is made to clear the debt it will follow the procedure of the school’s Debt Management Policy.

Information regarding free school meals is available from the School Office.

Appendix One

Appendix Two

Appendix Three