UKH

£30 for £5 worth, value for money? When are we going to get a decent government, not pissing our money away to their chums?

Yvette Cooper

It’s a complete disgrace that a Government contracted private company has supplied this as £30 worth of food for a family on free school meals. This would have cost little more than a fiver. What happened to the rest of the money? And it’s meant to cover TWO WEEKS of school - how are families supposed to manage with that?

There’s many more examples like it from right across the country. It’s truly appalling.

We had to fight for families to be entitled to free school meal vouchers during the Covid crisis, but this is yet another insult from the Tory Government. They just don’t get it - they are completely out of touch with the pressures families are facing.

Families must be provided with the full £30 voucher so they can keep their children properly fed.

It’s not good enough to claim they’ve had to do this in a rush. After all the Covid difficulties we’ve had in the last 12 months, the Government should have had a basic plan ready in place they could use at any time.

No family should be struggling and no child should be going hungry in 21st century Britain.

it struck me when hearing this stuff that perhaps the people running this company are trying to make a profit AND perhaps justifying it by thinking the needy should be punished for the circumstances they find themselves in

It's madness, I keep hearing the Tories taking the piss out of Corbyn's plans for more hospitals, police and renationalisation, and their scorn about the magic money tree!

Seems it only shakes for friends of the government.

the Victorian Slum reenactment series on BBC4 should be compulsory viewing for the ruling party.  Trouble is they might just look on approvingly.

Brexit might allow Britain to return to its glorious and proud past

A number, if not all of the major supermarkets, do food boxes for their customers.

Why didn't the Government approach them to provide boxes instead of Chartwell?

Earlier last year we tried the vegetarian one from Morrisons( https://www.morrisons.com/food-boxes/box/vegetarian-food-box)  for £35 which looked a lot better value that what we have seen of the boxes in the news.

I'm sure if approached the supermarkets could have tailored their boxes to Government requirements.

Dave

It's utterly nuts.  Apart from the cost, the pictures have the wierdest mixtures of food.  Heinz (why top brand for this!?) beans, half a tomato, two portions of pasta and load of crap bread.  What the hell are you meant to do with that?

Beans on toast with a tomato pasta salad.

They'd be a weird mixture of items if you were nipping down to Asda to spend about £7 on them.  Maybe not so much if you're a catering company using up the leftovers you have kicking about anyway.

I see Hancock, just said he thinks free school meals are a good thing, even though he voted against them in parliament.

And yet people continually argue that MPs are underpaid...

Maybe Im being too generous to them, but the suppliers have stated that it only actually cost £10.50 and packing + distribution was included in the cost, and it was intended to last one school week. Source https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55641740#main-heading:~:text=Chartwells%2C%20....

Assuming what they say is accurate that seems fairly reasonable.

£10.50 - What!!

I have just been to the Tesco website and costed the items shown in the Chartwell box.

I don't know what the three sweet-like items in the middle of the photo are so I did not include them, but for the loose fruit and veg I definitely slightly over estimated. From Tesco, and I assume things would be similar in the other well known food retailers, I could buy that box for £6.61.

Are the Government getting value for money from Chartwell?

I am a bit surprised by Chartwell's comment that this was meant for one school week. Did they think that showed them in a good light?

Dave

Matt Hancock.  Premier League footballers.  MP's pay.
Hm..  that all rings a bell from somewhere in the distant past..

https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/matt-hancock-piers-morgan-salary-18101...

Probably cost Chartwell’s a hell of a lot less. They’re not paying retail prices...

Chartwells are making a point that the parcel is for a week because Roadside Mum who’s Twitter started it off basically lied and said it was for two weeks (ie £30). 
What I reckon Chartwells have done is include the equivalent of 5 packed lunches and made plenty of profit which is clearly wrong. But I think many would be surprised at the small amount of food contained in a typical school packed lunch. 
I’ve been looking at other LAs have been doing: Liverpool sorted supermarket vouchers starting this week and backdated to last week, Leeds have done mega parcels, same in most of Wales, no complaints in Wigan. 
All the LAs I know used the extra cash provided by the government through its Covid Winter Grant scheme to help families on low income, some with food for children. I rarely say this but the government has done quite a bit to help vulnerable children with food:

 https://theguideliverpool.com/liverpool-is-providing-925k-in-free-school-me...

Wigan did similar but included fuel costs. All councils got this grant but could decide themselves how to spend it. There was a similar one over the summer and Wigan went down a school uniform voucher (which I helped with).

I don’t know how Chartwells and schools work together but I can’t work out how schools allowed this stuff to be sent it if so many are unhappy about it?

And weird to find myself cheering Piers Morgan on...

Im not arguing that what they've charged is necessarily right, but the cost is going to include hiring people at short notice to pack them up, making sure they're delivered in a timely fashion i.e. before the food spoils, packing materials etc. In other words, what you can buy down at tescos is not comparable because you're missing out loads of the costs involved in actually getting the food to people. If you only looked at the purchase price of the food involved I assume it'd be significantly cheaper than the £10.50 combined cost.

Forgot to say:  mystery food item = frubes. Never had one, think it’s a fromaige frais squeezey pouch type thing. The easy eat packaging allows them to charge triple. 

Fair enough my comparison is not exactly like with like. However, it does suggest that

(a) using supermarkets who already have a delivery structure, and/or

(b) providing vouchers to the families so they can go to the shops themselves at a lower overall cost.

would be better ideas.

Dave

For £30 supermarkets could supply £30+ retail value of food. If Marcus Rashford  asked they probably would do it for the PR and profit.

From what I can gather, when a school budgets for its meals it needs to include all those oncosts. A few schools have come out and said that basically if they get say £2.50 for a meal then so long as they provide  food according to the guidelines then they can spend the money on what they want, so they might spend 1.20 on actual food and 1.30 on oncosts. This will mainly be spent on staffing costs. I guess this may be a reason why the gov’t advises schools to use its own staff and suppliers  - helps keep school staff in jobs? And if a school opts for a voucher system then they will have less income for staffing costs (no expert on this, just deducing).
The schools I know that are successfully using their own staff and suppliers do provide more food but not by much. Other schools and LAs are likely to be using their own funds to supplement.

Its understandable that we are seeing many parents saying ‘but that’s not £15 of food, I cud spend it better.’  But by my reckoning if a school did spend £15 they would be massively out of pocket. Most of this would apply to contractors like Chartwell (but probs have less overheads so should include more but not as much as people seem to think).

Interestingly about 12% of people eligible for FSM don’t bother, which is weird. 


 

Why aren't families given vouchers. Would save a fortune in distribution, packaging and admin.(I know the answer- they consider poor people feckless). But child allowance isn't a parcel, and MP's £25.00 a day for food isn't a food parcel.

Locally, after understandable difficulties last week due to a last minute change of plan by government (not as bad as those that have made national headlines but still pretty basic) As well has £15 vouchers (per pupil per week) they are getting food parcels that would probably be enough on their own (through links with supermarkets and food banks). I'm not going to try and  some of the providers but I think the government are happy this is deflecting blame from a short term problem they created.

Vouchers (via national gov’t scheme) for £15/week should be available next week and this was in the plan the govt produced at the start of this lockdown (which every man and his dog seems to have ignored, even the feckless govt !)
Liverpool City Council already doing vouchers, started this week, back dated to start of term (linked on my other thread). This was their decision and I see no reason why other LAs couldn’t have done the same - but as I’ve said before there are good reasons for not doing vouchers - food parcel deliveries allow contact to do a quick ‘welfare check’.

That’s good. To be fair to the BBC tonight they did say ‘lots of people happy with their provision’.  Be good if they highlighted more positive stuff, but they do like a band wagon !!

For profit companies have no place running services that historically were nationalised.

Employee owned or not-for-profit are ideal for these. The value should be achieved without compromising the goal.

£5 of food, £30 of food, not the point. The goal was to provide vulnerable children with at least one meal a day, delivering that outside of school was the task.

Riverford can do an organic veg box for 4 for a week for £20 with a recipe card. With a better attitude towards social responsibility a lot could be acheived.

That percentage was higher when I started teaching (decades ago) and there was one simple reason: stigma. Kids didn't want to look poor in front of their mates and parents didn't want to look like they couldn't afford to feed their kids. It wasn't helped by such practices as, "All those on free meals line up over there." When I became a head one of the things I was very keen to do was get catering in-house so the staff were properly part of the whole school team. Quality of course went up - in fact we won awards for our food. (My night out with the team at an awards dinner got very lively once the ladies met the free bar!) Straight out of My Big Book of Management, page 1. Not a book this government, with its fetish for outsourcing, appears to have read. Next thing I did was go cashless so FSM kids couldn't be identified. Marcus R's involvement will I hope be doing a lot to reduce this ridiculous stigma our out-dated social attitudes insist on attaching to poverty.

Stigma is one. Reckon it’s less of one now. When I started reading some massive report on the matter and then fell asleep, it was areas in SE that didn’t claim (nearer 20%?) yet in Newcastle was almost everyone claimed. I reckon it’s because FSM for reception and y1 y2 are not ‘means tested’ so many families don’t need the money so don’t claim.  
Oh, you did good work their, agree with all you say. 

Cashless made a big difference, although we did have a problem a few years ago with Christmas dinner. Basically if a FSM kid had bought a piece of toast, bacon butty at break, they didn't then have enough left on their card for the full Christmas dinner that day and that was the only option.

Due to performance measures, schools are now more proactive if they think pupils are eligible for FSM.  At one time Harris Academies (secondary) has 10-15% higher FSM than their feeder primaries, due to this. Perhaps a good outcome for the wrong reasons?

I think there are some ‘for profit’ companies that do a good job and the detail of the contract is key. But large nationals like Chartwells should be sacked off. 
So not for profit, coops or ethical businesses, with good working agreements with schools etc is the way to go,

As an aside, lots of talk about ‘let Tesco’s do it, they would get more food and have the infrastructure’. I do have a very real concern that, as stated in my other posts, this would mean schools getting less money. The organising and delivery of food parcels comes at a cost, schools cannot match Tesco’s and Tesco’s would not do the (more important?) welfare check. 

As per my reply to Philip, when schools are working with their own caterers and in many cases not giving much more food than Chartwells (because a schools costs may contain substantial overheads), I wonder if giving the cash to Tesco’s would mean NOT giving it to schools? Genuinely don’t know. 

Was doing some rough maths:

Two staff doing the admin for 25 food parcels (dealing with suppliers, invoices, arranging drop offs with parents), packing parcels, delivering = 6 hours.  Hourly rate £10 plus NI etc = £24 for the two.  Staff costs  = £144 = £5.75 per parcel. Lob in mileage, contribution to running costs etc etc. and it’s easy to see that the value of the food couldn’t be much more than 8 quid or so.

Just checked how much they cost. They retail at £2.00 for 9, currently on offer in ASDA at £0.95 for 9. I suspect that the catering size packaging is significantly cheaper than either.

A few years back I had my head come and observe me teach an A level sociology lesson. He's a decent chap and seemed genuinely interested, but it's always a bit nerve wracking being observed by the boss! Anyway I was teaching about compensatory education policies and we were discussing pupil premium and free school meals and I must have said something about stigma. I think I was saying how we as teachers should know who all the pupil premium kids are in our classes so we can make sure we do whatever is necessary to help them make progress (whether that is really possible is totally different massive debate!) - because nationally, its very clear poorer kids don't do as well in education as more privileged kids. But the head actually put up his hand to join in the discussion! But his story was fantastic - he told about another school where he had taught where someone had come up with the fantastic idea of giving all the pupil premium kids different coloured planners from everyone else - on of those schools where you had to have your planner on the desk - of course it took seconds for the rest of student body to work out that red planner people were "chavs" compared to majority blue planner pupils. You couldn't make this stuff up!

Great story. It was for similar reasons that I hated streaming/setting kids on entry to secondary school, based on their KS2 scores. It took seconds for them all to look around and think either, "Great, I'm (still) clever" or "Shit, I'm (still) thick." So much for their new start and shiny resolutions. And then you factor in group dynamics and teacher expectations.... First thing I did as a head was get rid of that. Of course, the mathematicians and linguists were the hardest to convince - but they made it work, bless 'em.

I got into value-added analysis very early. The only way I could get any kind of deprivation measure for each school in the LEA was to ring the catering department for the FSM figures. I then simply plotted these on a graph against the raw GCSE 5C's and above. That was pretty revelatory. I was Deputy in a really tough school in Smethwick at the time - but all of a sudden we were at the top not the bottom of the performance league table!

It can't be a big leap in cost, once you factor in the expense of administering the current system, to just have free compulsory school lunches for everyone  ie. No packed lunches, going off site etc.  either. Kitchens would have precise numbers and a budget that wouldn't change frequently to plan a decent menu ahead of over time. Staff should eat there too. There would be no them and us stigma, plus everyone rich or poor would likely eat better roo. 

A hot lunch for everyone is just a normal part of school in Finland from 7 when they start through to 18 or 19 when most finish. At uni a similar style lunch is available at a, I believe, quite discounted rate because everyone just got so used to the idea from being in school! Not sure it necessarily helps people develop their cooking skills. When I first moved to Finland my partner generally had some rye bread in the cupboard and cheese and marge in the fridge, and that was about it as she had lunch at uni everyday!

What the actual @#$% ????

Where do they find such a rich source of idiots, and who actually allows them near real children? 

Let me guess, it was one of those fast track management people. 

Its probably best I didn't work at that school, I would have been having another "little chat in an office" for my inability to politely express my views on that, probably asking if they'd like to put armbands with stars on the children too.  

I prefer setting on new data not ks2 data.  

I hate teaching mixed ability maths.  It is a disaster for both the brightest and for the weakest.  Even with differentiation it isn't great unless you are in a school that doesn't truly have a comprehensive intake.  

Give me a bottom set any time over mixed ability.  I hate not being able to give the weakest ones enough help and time.  

Our govt just can't seem to get enough of this 'hungry children' fun, can they?

https://metro.co.uk/2021/01/14/schools-told-not-to-give-out-free-school-mea...

Ten years ago I would have completely agreed. Now I'm not sure, I do still think the bottom 5-10% and the top 3% are difficult to cater for in a mixed ability setting.

Lots of maths teachers locally seemed to struggle last term with year 7 as they weren't allowed to "set" in September

The issue I see is that in week 1 they're faced with a problem. Cost will exceed income.

Now if you're an ethical business, and if these contracts were build on purpose not cost saving, then you would achieve the goal and recoup costs later. It happens in the industrial world. The big difference here is the "customer" is the government (they're who's paying) the beneficiary is the child. There is no feedback loop.

With regard to how it's done. For the first week. It's cold. 5 cans of hearty soup, bread, yoghurt, fruit. If you're bulk ordering you don't end up with 5 of the same. You can mix that a bit for beans on toast. But it gets nutrition, hot food, sense of fullness (depending on soup type, but I'm thinking chunky veg). It's what I feed my children (albeit they get the luxury of homemade, I'm not comparing).

I'm not going to comment more. To be honest having kids I find this whole topic soul destroying. It's sickening to live in a country that doesn't successfully care for those who can't care for themselves.

It's the same in Sweden and don't think Norway or Denmark are vastly different either. Whilst it's obviously costing the taxpayer, you'd like to think there are knock effects in terms of at least attempting to engrain healthy habits and reduce future medical or dental costs. 

Not quite as bad as the headline makes out, but it will still probably result in similar issues during half term. Why??

I know how strongly many maths teachers feel about this. I was fortunate in being able to appoint a superb Head of Maths who was an evangelist for pretty radical approaches and committed to a high degree of mixed ability (some broad ability banding in KS4). It certainly worked for us as value-added was outstanding, at all ability levels. No streaming/setting on entry was crucial to the culture I was creating, which paid off in all sorts of ways. I'm sure others could have achieved equally good results with a different culture but I had to be true to my own vision.

Fair enough.  I'd be interested to know how it was managed and what was done differently because I've seen a lot of schools try it, but not many successfully.  I can see that it could work in schools which have a large majority of middle-ish kids and no really extremely weak or bright ones. 

I'd settle for one top extension set, one small support group bottom set (ability not behaviour) and the rest mixed.  

My personal preference is to teach year 7 mixed until Christmas (with differentiation) then test and set.  Movement between sets half termly until the end of year 9 means nothing is set in stone.  

The KS2 results aren't worth the paper they are written on in my opinion and I'd certainly not use them for anything. 

I don't agree with streaming and setting is pointless if it isn't reviewed regularly.  Its certainly not a cure all. 

Unfortunately I think some schools have seen what you have done and decided that mixed ability maths will magically provide good progress.  It's now this weeks fashion and that is nothing to do with vision and everything to do with trying to take shortcuts to improve with no real understanding.  

I always had arguments with the Heads of PE, DT and Drama about why could I make better GCSE predictions based on the kid's KS2 Maths and English results, than they could using their own KS3 assessments.

We had full mixed-ability in all subjects for KS3, then introduced two broad ability bands in half-year groups for the core at KS4. Options remained full mixed-ability. Maths teaching was very active, with a high degree of discovery learning, group work and differentiation. No text books. I realise many teachers would run a mile from such an approach!

Our intake wasn't at all skewed. I always made a big deal of the fact that we were a "bog standard comp" in terms of our intake: the LEA grouped kids into four ability bands and we would have around 23-27% in each. But once things started to take off our value-added results were regularly in the top 5% nationally. We won the School Achievement Award each year when it was - amazingly - a cash prize to be distributed among all the staff! (This may have been before your time.)

I was very lucky in having a significant number of staff who were on a mission to prove the efficacy of progressive methods and the nobility of the comprehensive ideal. Parents were supportive and the kids were incredibly loyal.

I would think that it is the only way to make it work.  I like all of those methods. 

Unfortunately recently I've been in schools which have decided to mix boring whole class teacher talking death by PowerPoint with mixed ability.  It is a disaster.  

Pedagogical car crash.

I remember those causing quite  bit of "discussion" .I was lucky 1990-2000 I think, I moved schools, my old school "won" but the head gave those of us who had left our "cut" as we had contributed to the results, not all did. Also at some schools it was only shared amongst the teachers, at others TA's kitchen staff, site staff etc. were included.

Why would you make it compulsory?  Free or cashless opt-in sounds good, while allowing the kids who want to to bring their own food.  I have opinions on this as I suffer from food intollerances (not allergies, just some things make me likely to be be messily ill) and not being able to avoid them in school meals made my childhood unnecessarily unpleasant.

Oh, but the private sector is so much more efficient and cheaper than the public sector; remember...

Don’t let the bastards get you down, as someone famous once said.  

We divided it up among everybody, including TAs, catering, site, lunchtime supervisors etc. Everyone got the same irrespective of salary - but I adjusted it for FTE where appropriate. Full timers got around £200 if I remember right. I have to confess, I preferred it to performance-related pay, since it rewarded the whole team. A somewhat minority view! I'm aghast at what some Chief Executives of Academy chains earn nowadays, particularly given how little value too many of them add.

Agree entirely. Vouchers also an alternative as many have said. The Tory party makes a pretense of using taxpayers money carefully so (very optimistically) they will be made to justify the profit any company makes out of this ie profit being money that is not being used purely for food provision.

On the subject of food boxes and value for taxpayers' money, I remembered this from earlier in the year.  Different contractor, different circumstances, same old shit.

https://goodlawproject.org/news/food-parcels/