I wonder if that is to last a week, on the left, kind of a supplemental top up to the finnish families own food purchases, probably costs less than delivering the pic on the right daily to families in the uk. Be interesting to have a comparison of the cost of the finnish school meal schemes to the uk ones, I bet we in the uk are still paying a lot out for mediocre results back. [in terms of healthy nutrition for example]
The picture on the right is weekly not daily, and cost to the taxpayer is £18.50. I got my figures slightly wrong when I first posted.
It's the cost of Free School Meals + £3.50 extra per child, plus £3.50 for the companies labour, packing and distributions/delivery costs. I did think FSM budget was £15 a week, it isn't, it's £2.30 a day, therefore £11.50 a week + £3.50 + £3.50 = £18.50. Bear in mind the delivery is to the school in most cases, NOT to the childs home, so they will be delivering 100's at once.
I can't believe how some people are reacting to this, people (mainly without kids) saying how thankful people should be getting something free, totally missing the fact that the food pack is costing the taxpayer £18.50 a week, and it's terrible quality.
My daughter is entitled to them as Ellie is in year 2, but she told them not to bother, she's a very picky eater and she can afford to feed her so would prefer it to go elsewhere. The school phoned her this morning and said it was ready, she told them she didn't need it, but they said it would just go to waste, so she walked along for it, she got
loaf of cheap bread with a use by date of tomorrow, 2 pints green milk use by Sunday, 2 potatoes, 2 tins of own brand scotch broth, a tin of cheap tuna, tin of pek ham and 3 babybel, 3 tomatoes, 1 cucumber, 2 oranges, 3 pears, 2 apple and 2 bananas already brown.
Out of all that, if we were struggling, she would eat the apples, oranges, potato's few slices of bread and could probably, at a push, get through the milk. That cost £18.50. Whereas if they were giving £15 supermarket vouchers out, which were costing the government £12 (apparently), I could feed her for over a week, 2 proper meals a day with that, at a 35% reduction in cost.
I know some scummy parents were selling the vouchers, but theres always going to be some abuse in any scheme like this, but the majority weren't.
People are having to use foodbanks, literally begging for food to feed their kids, I just don't see the logic in going from something that costs less and lets you choose the food you buy, to something where the food is pre-picked. Not everyone likes everything, so at least you could buy what your child likes, rather than be forced to try to get them to eat stuff they don't.