School Meals

The cost of school meals for 2025/2026 is £2.50 per day – £12.50 per week.

Children in Reception – Year 2 receive FREE school meals due to government scheme.

The organisation of school meals is a major consideration.

Please help by:

  • Ensuring Payment is made via Parent Pay for your child/rens lunch/es
  • The school expects children to behave in an orderly manner at lunchtimes.
    Any child showing regular instances of disrespect, ill-manners, aggression or destructive tendencies will become the responsibility of the parent not the school.

Confectionary, Drinks and Other Snacks

The school insists that children do not bring sweets of any description.  Milk is provided at the current cost to those children who require it. Cans, cartons and bottles of any description must be left at home.  Please note that water is available for all children throughout the day (please provide a suitable plastic bottle) and fruit is offered to children in Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1.

 

Healthy Packed Lunches

Here at Stanhope Primary, we encourage children who stay for a packed lunch to eat a nutritious lunch in order to stay healthy. Whilst nuts are a good source of protein, due to some children having severe nut allergies and choking hazards, we would ask that parents do not provide children with nuts in packed lunches. No hot liquids/foods are allowed in packed lunches for Health & Safety reasons.

Sweets and chocolate bars are strictly forbidden, although ONE small snack-sized biscuit is permissible.

Healthy Lunchbox Suggestions

Try to vary the type of bread such as wholemeal, granary or high fibre white bread. Also make sandwiches from different kinds of bread including bread rolls, French bread, bagels and pitta bread as well as sliced bread.

Use a different sandwich filling each day – preferably including a fruit or vegetable.

For example,

  • Grated apple and sliced pear
  • Chicken, lettuce and tomato
  • Grated cheese and carrot
  • Tuna and sweetcorn
  • Cheese and cucumber
  • Mashed banana
  • Cottage cheese, grated carrot and grated apple

Fruit and vegetable

Some fruits to try:

  • Seedless grapes
  • Satsumas, tangerines or clementines (peeled and wrapped for younger children)
  • Small bananas
  • Cherries
  • Apples (can be cut into pieces for younger children and brushed with lemon juice to avoid browning)
  • Plums
  • Dried fruit such as apricots, dates or raisins
  • Fruit salad (apples, satsumas, pears, pineapple chunks, kiwi fruit and grapes work well together. Avoid bananas because they go brown)
  • Canned fruit transferred to a pot (use fruit stored in natural fruit juices rather than syrup)

Some vegetables to try:

  • Cherry tomatoes
  • Carrot sticks
  • Celery sticks
  • Cucumber chunks
  • Baby sweet corn
  • Grated carrot and raisin salad

Drink

Avoid sugary and fizzy drinks. Instead use water or fruit juice.

Other lunch box items

Sweet suggestions

  • Scones
  • Malt loaf
  • A flapjack
  • Yoghurt
  • Teacakes

Savoury suggestions

  • Rice cakes
  • Bread sticks
  • A boiled egg
  • Cheese and crackers

Keep it cool to keep it fresh

  1. If you make sandwiches the night before, wrap them up and keep them in the fridge overnight.
  2. If you include a carton of fruit juice, keep it in the freezer until the morning before it will be drank. Then put it directly in the lunch box – it will have thawed by lunchtime and kept the rest of the food cool.
  3. Use a small, insulated cool bag.