Photos of school lunches, which look more like leftovers, have sparked outrage on social media in Thailand, once again raising questions over the quality of lunch menus in Thai schools.
A Facebook page called “Mai-chub-kub-Banjong”, reposted the photos from one of the parents, showing what Year 5 students at a private school in Bangkok’s Don Mueang district had to eat for lunch each day.
The post explains that one of the students took the pictures and sent them to their parents, which shocked them as they were paying almost 30,000 baht per semester for the tuition fees, which includes 3,000 baht for the school lunch. Despite how much money they have spent, their children ended up with minimal portions of rice and chicken nuggets or rice with sausages.
At the time of this report, the Facebook post had been shared over 6,000 times.
The post also noted that the Thai cabinet increased the budget for school lunches in all primary schools in Thailand last year, while private schools asked parents to pay extra. This has raised further questions over the quality of the food being served to young students.
The post also complained that, whenever Education Ministry officials visit a school, with reporters on the scene, the lunch menu is often presented as delicious and with wide variety of options, which contrasts with what they experience on other days. The post also said that the parents have already raised their concerns with the teachers, but nothing has improved.
Budgets for school lunches have long been an issue in rural schools across Thailand, which have seen a deterioration in the quality of food and malnutrition in young children.
In 2019, a school director in Thailand’s southern province of Surat Thani was fired over a viral clip of the students eating rice noodles mixed with fish sauce for school lunch. Two years later, the director was sentenced to 192 years in prison for his involvement in corruption related to the funding of the school’s lunches.
