Unhealthy Food Searched for and Confiscated at Dickens School

A school in Kent, named after Charles Dickens, has announced it will be searching for and confiscating unhealthy food from students. If the question is ‘please Sir, can I have some more mars bars?’, the answer is always no.

Confiscated and not returned

Much like Fagen’s gang of pickpockets, students at the Charles Dickens School were coming in, with pockets full of goodies! It was not uncommon to see students arriving with multi-packs of unhealthy snacks, sweets and even 2 litre bottles of fizzy drinks. The school said in a statement:

“We had noticed a deterioration in concentrations, learning and behaviour particularly from students bringing into school large multi-packs of unhealthy food, snacks and drinks.”

As such, it recently announced on its website that such items would be banned. Daily bag searches would confiscate and not return any items found.

Helping parents out

It seems that most parents at the school are on board with the policy. There will no doubt be some parents who are unhappy items are not being returned at the end of the school day. Clearly though, the school believes the benefit of healthy food throughout the school day outweighs the negatives of such a policy.

At FasTrak we know healthy food is important for school children’s physical development and academic performance. And for the most part parents know this as well – they aren’t sending their kids to school with these unhealthy snacks. One parent of the school who supported the policy said:

“Of course, kids will buy them before and after school, so many parents have no idea what is being confiscated.”

Many parents send their children to school fully expecting them to spend the money they give them on school food. We all know that doesn’t always happen. Here at FasTrak, we believe our Cashless Catering can be a great solution to the problem.

When you use a cashless catering system, there is no need to send students to school with cash for lunch time. Everything is paid online in advanced, and accounts can be monitored by parents to see that their child is getting a school lunch every day.

Cutting unhealthy food

A cashless catering system, combined with a policy of banning unhealthy snacks is a good approach to improving the health of students at school and hopefully their concentration and behaviour in class. Now the only question that remains is, what do the teachers do with all the confiscated snacks?

Related links & news stories

BBC: Pupils’ school bags searched for unhealthy food