Thank you to everyone who pays dinner money regularly on a termly, half termly, monthly, weekly or daily basis, the rest of the message is not directed at you.

Unfortunately last week we had over £180 outstanding for dinner money which equated to more than 82 school dinners that had been taken but not paid for. I do appreciate that there will be rare occasions that a child comes to school without a lunch and no means to pay, on these days we would expect the parent to pay at the earliest opportunity, online or at the end of the day. However, we do expect payment 99% of the time to be paid on the day or at the beginning of the week. There is nowhere else (that I am aware) where you could send your child to have a meal and not pay for it.

It has never been so easy to pay, we accept cash, cheques or card at the school office or you can pay via School Money with a card. We really can’t allow these debts to accrue like this it takes an inordinate amount of staff time chasing parents for money.

If you think you might be entitled to free school meals please contact Shropshire Council to make a claim apply for free school meals.

If you are genuinely struggling please contact the school office and we will help you if we can, alternatively please remember you can pay daily, weekly or monthly depending on how regularly you receive an income.

If you do send your KS2 child to school with dinner money we would appreciate you give it to them so they can place it in their own bag, often parents will tell us which pocket of a bag it is in but the children are adamant they don’t have it.
Teachers do ask children in a morning if they have dinner money to hand in, which is of course preferable to office staff having to disturb the class during the day to retrieve it.

Any monies received will stay on your child’s account until they use that money to take a dinner, so if a child is off school unwell the money will roll on to the next day/week/month.