Catering

Our catering is provided by Hertfordshire Catering who have many years’ experience and provide a top quality service at reasonable prices.  We are able to provide a service that suits our customers’ ever changing needs.

We believe that food is not only an essential part of everyday living, but should be an enjoyable nutritional educational experience, held within a social circle.

We cater for all kinds of nutritional needs, including special diets. If your child requires a special diet, please make us aware of their specific needs.

If your child has not had time for breakfast at home, we run a ‘Breakfast Club’ in the mornings. The dining hall is also open at break time, selling a large variety of hot/cold snacks and drinks.

Meal of the Day

We provide daily a choice of a main meal and a pudding. We also offer meal deals. For example, a salad, jacket potato and filling, pasta dish or hot meal with either a pudding, small yoghurt, fruit pot or a sandwich meal deal. Fresh water is available from the various dispensers around the school.

Free School Meals

Your child can get a free school meal if you receive any of the following:

• Income support
• Income-based jobseekers allowance
• Income-related employment and support allowance
• Support under Part VI of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999
• The guaranteed element of State Pension Credit
• Child Tax Credit (as long as you are not entitled to Working Tax Credit and you do not get more than £16,190 a year)
• Working Tax Credit run-on (paid for four weeks after you stop qualifying for Working Tax Credit)
• Universal Credit (with annual earned income of no more than £7,400 after tax and not including any benefits you get).

Apply today through your local authority if you receive any of the above benefits. It takes five minutes and in most cases you will be told straightaway if your child can get free meals at school.

Click this link to check eligibility and apply

Have your National Insurance number or Home Office number to hand when you apply.

If your child is eligible for free school meals, they will remain eligible until March 2025 or until they finish their current phase of schooling (primary or secondary) if that is after the end of March 2025.

Live Register System

We use the Live Register cashless catering system which enables lunches to be paid for in advance. This helps us to serve food more quickly and reduce the time that students spend queueing for their food. Initially we will set a limit on the daily spend per student of £6.00 although this can be varied by request.

We have chosen the Live Register system as this uses the latest biometric technology to scan a student’s finger. This generates a unique number to identify your child and allows them to spend the money that you have put on their cashless account. The finger scan image is not stored and cannot be used by any other system; it is a very simple process.

Funds are loaded on to the student’s account using ParentPay, an online secure site that you can access via our website once students have started with us. No cash can be taken in the canteen at any time.