School Lunches

At Kents Hill School, we have contracted Dolce to provide cooked meals on site daily. Dolce are a family company, proudly run by third generation artisan caterers. Two course meals using locally sourced ingredients are freshly cooked to order and delivered to us.

Booking meals for your child is a simple and easy process. Meals are booked via School Grid. Please provide the school office with your email address so that we may activate your account for you.

Please note: Your account will not be activated until your child’s first day with us, so please make provision for a packed lunch on your child’s first day. You will then receive an email from School Grid, our software providers, with all of your necessary login details. By accessing School Grid online, you will be able to pre order meals, view recipes, allergens, ingredients and make payments.

Important: You MUST place your order BEFORE 8.55am on the day that you would like the meal for your child. Ordering is disabled after this time and you will not be able to order a meal for that day i.e. if you want your child to have a meal on a Tuesday, you must order the meal BEFORE 8.55am on that Tuesday.

If you miss this deadline, a packed lunch must be brought in for your child instead as Dolce can no longer send spare meals.

Meals are FREE for all children in Reception to Year 2 but must be PAID FOR for all children in Nursery. Meals cost £2.20 per day. Details on how to pay will be found in your School Grid account. Accounts are not permitted to go into arrears. School Grid will cancel any future meals for accounts in arrears and you will not be able to place any orders until your account is cleared of arrears.

Applying For Free School Meals:

If you receive any of the following support payments, your child may be entitled to receive free school meals:

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 Pension Credit
Child Tax Credit (provided you’re not also entitled to Working Tax Credit and have an annual gross income of no more than £16,190)
Working Tax Credit Run-on – paid for 4 weeks after you stop qualifying for Working Tax Credit
Universal credit if you apply on or after 1 April 2018 your household income must be less than £7,400 a year (after tax and not including any benefits you get).
Children who get paid these benefits directly, instead of through a parent or guardian, can also get free school meals.

Please follow the link below to see if you qualify:

https://www.cloudforedu.org.uk/ofsm/sims

Even if your child is in Reception, 1 or 2 and receiving Universal Free Infant School Meals (UFISM), or if you have applied before and do not think you are eligible, please do apply. In doing so, you will help us to find out whether we can claim Pupil Premium for your child. This is additional funding to spend on resources such as extra staff, books, extracurricular activities or school trips for eligible children.

Packed Lunches

Packed lunches must be brought into school by your child at the start of the day in a suitable lunch box clearly labelled with your child’s name.

Please provide water in a plastic bottle (no fizzy drinks or glass bottles allowed). If you provide a yoghurt please include a spoon as we can only supply cutlery to children having hot school meals.

Children must not bring in chocolate bars or sweets (a chocolate biscuit is acceptable) and should be given a healthy sandwich and a piece of fruit or vegetable snack.

We would like to remind you that children should NOT bring nuts of ANY kind including:

Whole or chopped nuts
Items specifically containing nuts, such as Snickers bars or some types of cereal bars
Sandwich spreads containing nuts, such as Nutella or store own brand equivalent

This is to protect any members of our whole school community who have potentially life-threatening nut allergies.

A little about Dolce…

We offer a choice of menus per term, operating on a three-week cycle and served with a selection of healthy side dishes, bread and a well-stocked salad bar. All our menus are nutritionally analysed to make sure they are compliant with the School Food Standards. Our menus change each term because we use seasonal produce. This means our fruit and vegetables have the benefit of being fuller, fresher and more locally sourced. Buying in season also makes produce cheaper to procure and helps keep the meal cost down.

Online ordering has many benefits to you, enabling you to place an order using a smart laptop, tablet or computer. Some of the benefits are:-