A free school headmistress has been criticised on the internet for her rather harsh dealing of kids whose parents fail to pay the school lunch money. Katharine Birbalsingh, head of Michaela community school in Wembley, London, sent parents a deemingly threatening letter about punishing pupils with "lunch isolation" if their lunch payments weren't made on time.
The letter posted on Twitter by a parent, read, "You are currently £75 overdue. If this full amount is not received within this week you child will be placed into Lunch Isolation. They will receive a Sandwich and a piece of fruit only. They will spend the entire sixty minutes period in lunch isolation. Only when the entire outstanding sum is paid in full will they be allowed into family lunch with their classmates."
Another parent, Dionne Kelly said, "I found the letter quite threatening. Isolating children for their parents not paying upfront is degrading. It's embarassing for poor families." She said she had already paid the money by the time she received the letter, but her 12 year old boy was punished nevertheless. The school boasts of a "zero tolerance discipline" system and strict academic principles. 'Family Lunch' is a term that refers to Michaela's timetabled lunch break, where children are charged £2.50 a day for meals with payment required upfront.
The 'Superhead' however, remains unapologetic of the policy saying parents who refuse to pay are betraying their children's education. "Should we charge a poor single mum twice so she can pay for Jonny just becase she has a sense of personal responsibility and Jonny's mother doesn't?" Birbalsingh asked. "Free school meals looks after the poorest. Even then we have all sorts of system for people who really are in financial need, and I mean the real ones. I don't mean the ones who are playing the system, trying to get other families to pay for their child's food."
"We’ve got three families in the whole of the school where this is the case. They are all families who are betraying their children. One we are reporting to social services," she said.
Birbalsingh drew attention to herself in 2010, when she described states schools as "utterly chaotic" in a speech at the Conservative party conference.
