chapter XXIII - school dinners 01

Here in the UK, every school child was from 1944 onwards all schools were required to be supply each child with a full cooked meal at lunchtimes. In the UK these were known as school dinners (not lunches) Usually they were composed of a main course and a dessert. Some extra tasty, some not so much. Some we loved, some we hated.

A lot has been said and written of late about school meals, especially about their nutritional value. I doubt, given the way ours were cooked were of tremendous nutritional value. But that wasn't the point, well not the main point. What did matter however, was ensuring every kid got a good, square meal a day. I was suprised to learn that they were initially introduced in the mid 19th century, but were not made compulsory until the Education Act was passed in 1944.

But even more suprising, I have just found out that a reader of this blog had a Great Aunty who was awarded an MBE for her participation in helping introduce these compulsory meals!

Trawling the net, doing some research, I happened upon this menu that was used in Norfolk schools in the 50's. Could be the same menu as was served to us in Plymouth in the 60's, as all the dishes look very familiar! During my research I also discovered that the menu could easily be relavent to evreyone, everywhere, as everyone around the country seems to have memories of the same dishes as I do

For these meals we had purpose built kitchens and dining halls. Some schools like my senior school cooked their own, but some like my junior school had them delivered in large hot boxes from other main school kitchens and literally just dished them out to the kids. Those that dished them out were known as dinner ladies, one of whom was my mother who worked at my junior school at Salisbury Road. 

This photo was taken in the late 70's, of my mother and the team of dinner ladies  (mum is pictured far right)

Every Monday parents would give you money in an envelope; it was either 1s 3d or 2s 6d total I think. Making it 3d or 6d a day (that's 1 or 2p decimal a day), that you handed over to your teacher in the morning when they took 'the register' or the roll call was made. Then there were some kids like myself who were from single parent families, or those who's dad was out of work received free school meals. After collecting the money from 'the rich kids', the teacher would then call out the names of all of us getting free meals. Why, we were put through that humiliation is beyond me

At 12 o clock the school bell would go and off we would head to the school dining room, to see what delight was waiting for us. The main meals were typically meals of any average UK household, meals like steak and kidney pie, fish and chips, stew and braised steak. We would all queue up with a wooden tray and one by one had our food slip, slopped and slapped onto the plates. Always finished off at the end by the dinner lady with a large jug of tasteless, insipid gravy. That while tasteless, always had a familiar fatty aroma to it.

Then you went and found a seat, hopefully at a table with your best friend. The table was a big long tressle one with a bench type seat on either side. Once seated we all had to say grace before eating, "for what we are about the receive, may the Lord make us truelly thankful', Amen" You then ate silently, no elbows on tables, and sat there until you had finished. All the while being monitored by a school meal monitor (a hired grey haired lady thug), who would excuse you once you had put your hand up and she could see a clean plate. You were then free to take your dishes etc to the clean up area, stack it neatly and then leave to go out to play.

school milk

But before school dinners, there was school milk. Started in 1944, every school child was given 1/3 of a pint of milk at school. It came in small glass bottles, sealed with a silver foil top. This was finally stopped in 1971 under Margaret Thatcher's ministrial regime. From this she earned the moniker; Thatcher, Thatcher, the Milk Snatcher. In all fairness though we were apparently spending double the amount on milk than we were on books!

The memory of school milk for me is of drinking room (read warm) temperature milk through a straw. Warm because the crate was invariably left near a radiator! I remember we had milk monitor's; who's responsibility it was to pass out the milk to the class. Usually we were given it to drink late morning. Sometime during the morning (usually during the time the register was being taken), the milk monitor would often take the foil top off in readiness. The trouble with that was the milk crate often got left under the blackboard, meaning it got 'contaminated' with a layer of white chalk (a purpose ploy, like the radiator? by an evil teacher, to make it even more unbearable?)

school dinner water
Anyone else remember that on the table when you got there with your school dinner, was some old battered, bruised, badly dented, strange coloured stainless steel water jugs, normally with a pile of well scratched, coloured, plastic 'see through' beakers? I remember that the water, once poured, always seemed to have spme strange 'floaters' of some kind in it. The beakers were all numbered on the base, and the higher number you got, the better you were than your mates. ;-)

follow my next chapters on all the meals we had (with recipes) .....