School dinner snub ‘like a Dickens novel’

♦ A primary school has warned parents that if their children’s dinner money arrears exceed £6.60, they will be fed only bread, fruit and water.

Jamie-lee Heath, whose nine-yearold daughter fell foul of the rules at Mount Pleasant School in Shrewsbury, said: “It’s like Charles Dickens and ‘Please sir, can I have some more?’.”

But Steve Morris, the head, later said a child would always receive a meal. Although he had previously told parents it was bread, fruit and water, he accepted that the statement “lacked detail and clarity – in reality the children receive more than this”.