When your child tucks into a school meal you can be assured a lot of thought has gone into making it as healthy as possible. Our school meal provider, Gateshead Council’s School Catering Service in a nationally recognised, award-winning service; this award provides an analysis of standards, quality, cost and productivity in comparison to other similar local authorities.

The daily cost of a school meal will increase from £2.85 to £3.00 per day from April 2023. We would encourage you to use our online payment system which is located on our new MIS Parent portal ARBOR. This will offer you the flexibility to make payments whenever and wherever, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. School meals should be paid for in advance as we cannot carry forward school meal debt.

From September 2014 all children who are in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 in a state funded school will be offered a free healthy school lunch.  However, if your child already qualifies for a free meal, it is really important that you officially register for free school meals. Children in other school years will also be offered a free school lunch if their parent is receiving any welfare benefits, even if you don’t want your child to receive a free meal, please could you still register. Registering for free school meals help to fund valuable support, resources etc in our school. During COVID FSM families have been eligible for vouchers during the school holidays.  Gateshead Council are continuing to issue these vouchers so please register if you think you are eligible for means tested FSM. It would be a shame to miss out on any pots of money from the government.  Apply using this link: https://www.gateshead.gov.uk/article/7433/Free-school-meals

Pupils not wishing to eat a school meal can bring a packed lunch in a suitably sized container.  For obvious reasons we strongly encourage parents to provide healthy meals for those staying for packed lunch.

If you have any queries about means tested free school meals please email benefitsfsm@gateshead.gov.uk