Pay on-line for school dinners
This article explains – “Parents are demanding the choice of paying for their children’s school meals online to stop them either handing dinner money to bullies or spending it on sweets and take-aways in shops.” It makes me reflect on two key issues – firstly the challenges faced by those with poor broadband access in rural areas more generally in responding to opportunities to do things like pay for school meals online – it is now a well established fact that digital exclusion goes hand in hand with social exclusion and secondly the challenges facing schools in seeking to provide a decent lunch time meal for their pupils.
In the rush to promote local food and local produce we probably miss out on the broader challenges of getting the young people themselves to value lunch time and wholesome food as anything more than a playground business opportunity or an excuse to buy sweets. This may sound a bit trivial at first but the more you think about it the more it seems a really important fundamental issue. If we cant use school meals to explain where food comes from and why good local food is doubly important we are missing a real trick.