School apologizes after Christmas ‘prison food’ spreads on social media

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A West Sussex school has apologized after pictures of an unappetizing Christmas lunch spread on social media.

Steyning Grammar School and Sixth Form College said they would refund the cost of the meal as parents complained the food was not worth the £3.50 they were paid.

Students were given a white door covered with a slice of turkey and a single blanket, along with a rectangle of stuffing and a store-bought mince pie.

Ciaran Walsh, whose two daughters are both in school, took to Twitter to share a photo of the meal taken by his eldest daughter. In his tweet to the Bohunt Education Trust, which runs the school, he wrote: “Thank you for the Christmas lunch that was served to our kids at Steyning Grammar yesterday, it really filled them with festive cheer!”

Mr. Walsh, 46, said his daughter only ate mince pie.

“The impression I got was that most of these things went in the trash. For most of the kids, there was a sense of disbelief that this was what they got.”

“You want your kids to have the best, and Christmas is the time when a special meal is a part of that, and that just wasn’t special in the right way,” he added.

Another mother, Melanie Leog, told the Mid Sussex Times that the kids “haven’t had anything in the past year and it’s unfortunate that the school hasn’t done more for them because they’ve been through that hard.”

People who commented online criticized the school and compared the festive meal to “disgusting prison-like food”.

The school initially defended the meal claiming that “the overall feedback from the students was that they really enjoyed it”. But later, once Mr Walsh’s post went viral on Twitter, the school said it would “unreservedly apologize for this situation” and offered a refund.

“As you know, yesterday’s Christmas lunch menu was not of the standard we want or expect at SGS. Due to a combination of unforeseen supply chain issues and staff shortages related to Covid, our planned offering was affected in no time at all,” Assistant School Principal Natasha Nicholl said in a letter. Addressed to parents.

Among those who responded to the photo was Conservative MP Will Quince, who said of the quality of the food: “This is clearly unacceptable.

“We expect all schools, including academies, to comply with our Mandatory Nutritional Standards that promote a healthy, balanced diet – not just at Christmas but all year long,” he wrote on Twitter.

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