These pint-sized pupils enjoy taking time off from lessons when they pop into their local pub – for their SCHOOL DINNERS.
Schoolchildren at Swell Primary School in the Cotswold village of Stow-on-the-Wold, Glos., walk to their local, the Golden Ball Inn, for a pub lunch at 12pm every Tuesday.
After saying grace at the local village church, they tuck into school staples including fish fingers, chips and pizza as well as pasta and sweet potato casserole for just £2.20 a head.
The pub was asked to provide the service as the school does not have the facilities to offer hot food.
Chefs at the Golden Ball Inn – which is the only pub in the village – have been cooking for the pupils since January.
Dominique Simpson, who runs the pub, said she was approached by the school’s head teacher, Claire Fisher, just before Christmas.
She said: “They were having one cooked lunch a week that was being cooked at another school and being driven over.
“Mrs Fisher was quite keen to offer the parents another option of a hot dinner a week.
“It then transpired that they should come down here and have it rather than us carting it up to the school as it would be warmer and come out quicker.
“A lot of our locals send their children to the school and they have been saying ‘great I don’t have to make a packed lunch’, so it gives them a night off on a Monday.”
Mrs Fisher praised the pub for cooking up a storm with pupils and said the scheme had been running “really smoothly” so far.
She said: “I haven’t heard of children going to a pub for lunch before, I have heard of pubs preparing the food and bringing it to the school though.
“The first week we all walked down in our wellingtons in the snow but I can’t really see any reason where any weather conditions would keep us.
“It’s such a short walk – we don’t have to walk the children on the road – so it’s ideal.”
