Schools get involved in pupils` lunches

Parents have removed six children from a primary school after they introduced a blanket ban on packed lunches. Milefield Primary School in Grimethorpe, Barnsley, South Yorks., only informed parents of their controversial move in a letter sent home with the children on the last day of term in July.

And despite repeated calls from parents for their thoughts to be heard, the new dinner policy was implemented when the kids returned to school last Friday. Angry dad Adam Martin, 31, has now taken his three children, Harry, four, George, five and Amelia, seven, out of the school after losing all faith over the lunch dispute.

Gas engineer Adam said: "I feel like our freedom of choice has been taken away. We were appalled to be told our children couldn't take in pack lunches and further incensed with how the school have dealt with the situation. "We feel very strongly about this. I'm sure this must be violating some kind of human right." According to their strict new rules the only options open to parents now is to let them have a school cooked lunch or to go home.

Headteacher Paula Murray said: "We're not forcing anyone.[?] We're encouraging the promotion of healthy eating [?] and it's had such positive impact and we're only into day four of the actual programme being run out in the school. [After four days there`s a positive impact? She sounds like a politician.]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/11090606/Parents-remove-children-from-school-after-headmistress-bans-packed-lunches.html

Perhaps there are plans for biometric databases in the near future. See the Express:

Pupils will have their fingerprints taken at their £20,000 high-tech new school canteen in a bid to reduce queues and monitor pupils’ diets.

Redhill School in Stourbridge will bring in the controversial technology as part of a plan to implement a cashless system throughout the school. The system requires pupils to press a finger against a machine which converts the print into biometric data. This can then be used to identify individual pupils accounts.

http://www.expressandstar.com/news/2014/09/12/school-pupils-to-be-fingerprinted/

A lot of the respondents to the article are blase about the introduction of biometric databases into schools but you have to ask what incentives there are for schools to set up such expensive systems?  It would be naive to assume that there are none or that they are not financial. Training pupils to accept a cashless society also has political and economic consequences for them in their adult lives.

There are a few other assumptions that are not without controversy:

- that it should be the role of the school to monitor pupils` eating

- that collecting personal data and putting it into databases does not infringe privacy rights

- that schools do provide a `healthy` diet (If they do, this does beg the question then why monitor pupils?)