School Meals 081" by Cheshire East Council is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Education catering and food services teams Chartwells and Harrison have been slammed online after their free meal programmes failed to meet government standards in England and Wales.

Families who receive free school meals have been afforded food parcels as a substitute amidst bids to lower Corona Virus rates close schools in favour of remote learning.

However, many have taken to Twitter to express their disappointment in the scheme after they received a few pounds worth of food instead of the £30 value parcel they were promised.

The issue gained traction online after an unnamed woman with the handle @Roadsidemum on twitter published an image of the bag she received to feed her children for ten days that included a single tomato, eight cheese sandwiches and a tin of beans.

Picture via @Roadsidemum on Twitter depicting ten days’ worth of food given under the government's free school meal scheme.

Calculations suggest the hamper can be valued at no more than £5.22 if purchased from a local supermarket.

“Issued instead of £30 vouchers.” She penned with the post. “I could do more with £30 to be honest.”

The image has been shared nearly 20,000 times since it was posted on January 11^th and has encouraged an onslaught of similar tweets from disappointed parents who are struggling to provide lunchtime meals for their children which they would have otherwise received at school.

Chartwells, the company responsible for providing the parcels, responded to the tweet, citing: “Thank you for bringing this to our attention, this does not reflect the specification of one of our hampers,” and claimed they would “investigate immediately.”

Footballer Marcus Rashford, known for campaigning for children in the UK to receive free school meals over the holidays, gave his thoughts alongside another picture: “Three days of food for one family… Just not good enough.”

Similarly, self-proclaimed “former foodbank mum” and anti-poverty campaigner Jack Monroe was quick to express her outrage, posting a screenshot of the Government’s legislation on free school meals as a comparison to the “shoddy” parcel scheme.

“Not one [of the parcels] comes close to containing a third of what is on that list,” she tweeted in a response to Chartwells. “I don’t think I’ve seen a pea all day.”

The UK’s Department of Education responded to the outrage via Twitter: “We have clear guidelines and standards for food parcels, which we expect to be followed. Parcels should be nutritious and contain a varied range of food.”

Conservative MP Simon Clark appeared to back this, stating the Department of Education are: “investigating the [parcel] highlighted last night” and that “school caterers have now been issued with clear guidance about the food to provide in their parcels.”