Small schools and hot meals
Some further examples of how small schools go "the extra mile"
We have adopted the simplest structure
that we could. We have hot boxes delivered in the morning, we set up tables
in the village hall, food is served then they return to take away the hot
box and all the plates etc to be washed. That said we have had difficulty
in recruiting someone to serve the meals (myself and admin lady did this for
the first seven weeks) and now there is a slight knock on with the use of
the village hall. If we were unable to use the village hall then things are
going to be very tricky for ourselves!! I also have added to my daily
duties . . one of them is mopping the hall floor . . not quite what I
foresaw when taking up a headship!.
Bishopstone -Swindon
Our hot meals are fine. We have been providing hot school meals for about three years now from a hub school. Our issue is funding the transport as that is a factor not taken into account with costs. We use our village hall for school meals and this works well mostly. We do have issues with the cost of renting the hall now the County don't fund this any more. The meals are good but did you know even if you go on a day trip you still have to provide a hot school meal? County is trying to come up with a solution for this. This is impacting our trips for the year.
Thornborough - Bucks
(10 KS1 children, 1FTE teacher and 1 0.6FTE teacher. I am executive HT). We asked the Care Home across the road from school to provide our meals which they have agreed to. I have had to divert my only classroom assistant from supporting the children to help at the care home preparing the lunches for 30 minutes every day. We pay £100 a week for 10 meals. Although we have a kitchen in school, we have no staff capacity to make the meals 'in-house'. The teachers are taking it in turns to help serve the lunch and I have volunteer mums who come in to wash up! The provision is being financially supported from our revenue budget which has meant that I have had to cut the 'music service' to pay for it. It's a nightmare.
Captain Shaw's - Cumbria
(32 eligible KS1/KS2 children). We decided to take the provision in-house as there was no suitable external provider within a reasonable travelling distance of our remote school. Our cleaner has been trained and re-deployed to cook the meals and I have appointed a new cleaner. We only have a small domestic kitchen set up which we previously used for cooking lessons but we are managing with it. The LA have plans to provide us with a new kitchen but I understand that nothing will happen until next summer. It is a balancing act to ensure that we are within budget and obviously extra work for me and our secretary to do. I teach 0.5FTE and also I am at Captain Shaw's for one day a week.
Thwaites - Cumbria
If you have had experiences which are not reflected in these examples, please let us know.
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