School Canteen
We understand the importance of good, healthy food to our learners' wellbeing.
Poltair School is pleased to work with Caterlink, a company that focusses on developing meals for active learners, offering nutritious, energy-packed options that help fuel concentration and performance.
All the food is cooked in-house, using local produce wherever possible and learners have access to water throughout the day.
We encourage our learners to make their own choices from the various daily options on offer. There is always a range of meals to accommodate individual tastes.
Caterlink also run a variety of special menus throughout the year, often celebrating an event or culture such as St Piran's Day, Chinese New Year, and 'Destination Turkiye'.
Example menus
The canteen works on a three-week rotational menu. The menus are on display by the canteen entrance.
Cashless catering
To make paying for meals quick and easy, we use a biometric fingerprint system in our dining areas. A quick, low-resolution scan of a learner’s fingerprint is taken and turned into a secure encrypted code. No fingerprint image is stored, and the information cannot be read by other systems or shared with other databases.
Once their account is set up and has credit available, learners can simply use their fingerprint scan to access the canteen and pay for their food.
More details regarding our cashless catering and ParentPay can be found here.
Free school meals criteria change from September 2026
The UK government expanded free school meals (FSM) eligibility in England from September 2026. Under the new rules, all children in households receiving Universal Credit will qualify for free school meals.
If your child is eligible for free school meals (FSM), an allocation of £2.75 will automatically be added to their cashless catering account each day for them to spend in the canteen.
Any unspent funds from the day’s £2.75 allocation will disappear at the end of the day so learners are encouraged to make use of their allowance each day.
There are a range of meal deals available for £2.75 that enable your child to get a complete lunch with their FSM entitlement. The meal deals do offer a significant saving over buying the items individually, so is excellent value.