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School Meals

Healthy Eating at St Francis

Diet plays a crucial role in a child’s development and at St Francis we encourage healthy eating. To help reach their potential children need a good balance of nutrients to grow healthy minds and bodies and a steady supply of energy to maintain concentration throughout the school day.

We encourage healthy eating and promote it through the curriculum. St Francis has an annual Healthy Eating Week which focuses on the importance of diet and leading a healthy lifestyle. The children have great fun preparing their own tasty dishes on a budget and each class’ dish is judged on its nutritional value, presentation and affordability. We teach them that staying healthy not only affects us physically but it has a great impact on our mental well-being too.

Universal free school meals

Free school meals are available for all children in reception classes, Year 1 and Year 2, regardless of family income. They’re also available from Year 3 to Year 6, dependent on family income.

We strongly advise all parents to apply for Free School Meals, whichever year group your child is in as this will attract additional funding (pupil premium funding) for the school, which is used to provide additional curricular and extracurricular learning opportunities.

Each year the Government allocates additional funding to schools so that free school meals can be provided for children who have been registered. This additional funding is also available to be spent on resources, intervention and staff. With this in mind, we would ask you to read the following information regarding eligibility for free school meals. Even if you and your child prefer to have a packed lunch from home we would be grateful if you would complete the ‘Free School Meals‘ form available here. Or in paper form at the school office as it helps to school to receive additional funding.

Am I Entitled?

Free meals are available to any full time pupil who attends a school and is eligible.

You can get free school meals for your child if you or your partner gets either:

  • Income Support
  • Income based Job Seeker’s Allowance
  • Child Tax Credit only (with a family income of less than (16,190 as assessed by HMRC)
  • National Asylum Seeker’s Support
  • Guarantee Element of State Pension Credit
  • Employments and Support Allowance – Income related only.

Remember

Applying for your entitlement of a ‘free school meal’ could help us to secure maximum funding from the Government for the whole school. If you think your child may be eligible for Free School Meals, please go to www.kent.gov.uk

School Dinners

Hot Lunches are provided by The Contract Dining Company, who are based in Headcorn and provide high quality school meals, focusing on using fresh ingredients, sourced wherever possible through local suppliers. The menu features a selection of dishes, aimed at providing healthy and balanced meals as diverse as Mexican Organic Beef to Baked Filled Sweet Potato and is rotated on a 3-week basis. It’s also refreshed every season, which keeps things interesting and varied. Children have the choice of school meals or packed lunches, cost to be confirmed Sept 22.

School meals are provided by The Contract Dining Company.  For further information about them visit their site at http://www.thecontractdiningcompany.co.uk/

Packed Lunches

Packed lunches should be healthy and balanced, sweets and chocolate bars are not allowed but small chocolate coated biscuits are ok as part of a balanced meal. To drink, water is encouraged and fizzy or high sugar content drinks are not allowed. A number of children at our school are allergic to different forms of nuts so we ask all parents to be vigilant in not providing their packed lunch children with, for example, peanut butter sandwiches at lunchtime.

Children have the opportunity to eat a snack at morning break time and benefit the most from healthy options such as fruit or vegetables. We support the School Fruit and Vegetable scheme that entitles a free piece of fruit or vegetable to all children aged Four to Six every day. We discourage snacks that are high in sugar or fat.

We also provide milk free of charge for children under five. Milk is an excellent source of protein and vitamins, and each 189ml carton provides over half a child’s recommended daily allowance of calcium. Charging begins the term after your child turns 5 and prices are around 22p per day.

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