Free fruit

[kimmy]

I have been told today by my head that the free fruit will be stopping as from easter , does anyone still get free fruit for their children - i think we link in with main school for this - and if not do you have a budget to buy snacks?
The head told me that there was a possibility of a small budget from which to buy snacks for the pre school but now i.m worrying about how small this budget is ...i have spent ages getting my little ones to eat fruit and hate to think of all this going to waste....

[Heidi]

Free fruit was stopped quite some time ago in our area. Schools and Pre-schools then brought in a small snack fee to help towards snacks until the single funding formula was put into place.

With the single funding formula (either last April '10 or this April '11 depending on your area) settings are not allowed to charge funded children extra such as snack fees etc, however with non funded children it is up to settings how they collect their fees, so if they wish to they can continue to charge a small fee or to incorporate it into the fees.

We are not part of a school and have always had to fund buying snacks including fruit, we just have to make sure that it is budgeted into our fees. Our children seem to love everything we offer them - even if they won't eat it/ them at home.

[kimmy]

We used to fund our own when we were committee run before the big take over ...then we had the free fruit !!.... so it looks like the fruit will come out of our fee's then ...thanks for that heidi, wasnt sure if anyone else was having their fruit cut - cannot find anything about it anywhere :-( ...

[Heidi]

Kimmy,

I found this article, admittedly it is for Argyl, but it mentions them stopping the free fruit as part of their money saving budget - just so you know, it's happening elsewhere.

http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Art...erKey&UserKey=

[nettie]

Hi
the children at our setting bring in a piece of fruit in the morning we then prepare the fruit by slicing, peeling etc ready for snack. this works very well usually on a monday we get enough to last the week. we get a good range of fruit from the usually apple, pears etc to pineapples, melons