Catering

Schools should facilitate their school caterers in meeting the statutory duty to provide school meals services as outlined in the Department’s arrangements for the provision of school meals services.

A school meal must be adequate in quantity and quality so as to be suitable as the main meal of the day. It is expected that a hot meal will be available for pupils entitled to free school meals and paying pupils who wish to avail of them. This is particularly important for pupils entitled to free school meals for whom this might be their only meal that day.

Schools should provide a full catering service in a safe environment that provides hot food menus offering a choice, served in school dining halls where that was previously available.  Schools, which have not done so already, should move urgently to the provision of a hot meals service which is available to all pupils both FSM and paying.  In order to facilitate a full catering service, delivery of meals by the school meal staff to classrooms is no longer appropriate or sustainable.

Those schools that do not have a cashless system in place are strongly recommended to accept cash from pupils who wish to pay for their school meals, putting in place any mitigations that are considered appropriate to minimise the risk of virus transmission.

Where in exceptional circumstances schools cannot provide a hot meal to all pupils in school dining halls they should notify the EA immediately so that alternative arrangements can be considered. 

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