Part of the problem here is that the schools have been such a political pawn for so long.  My whole life I've been reading and hearing the right wail about how the schools in poor areas are 'wasting' money.  

I admit that here in California in the '70s, there was a small nugget of truth in the complaints -- a lot of 'liberal' programs had been instituted which were clearly ridiculous.  

There were various new ways of teaching reading and math that were dismal failures, but, worse, many 'alternative' programs that... well, let's just say a goodly amount of the people I knew in the LA punk scene had been subjected to Scientology and EST in high school.

However, most of that was short-lived.  The real problems started with the dismantling of the safety net.  Schools suddenly had to provide food, medical care, and policing.  Of course the budgets ballooned.  For the past 25 years or so, almost everything I've read about schools, usually in the interest of pushing vouchers or charter schools, has been a load of crap.

I was on a committee for an inner-city school for awhile, deciding how to allocate a federal grant they'd gotten.  Almost all the money was going to social services.  Teachers have long known that hungry kids don't learn well.  When this school got its grant, we fully funded the lunches and added in breakfasts.  

Maybe we can eventually make language a complete impediment to understanding. -Hobbes

Almost pointless to try and educate hungry or malnourished kids.

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre

I work in an inner-city primary school, and the free school meals children are well looked after.

At my daughter's high school, they use a debit card system as Izzy describes.  No one has any way of telling whose card is loaded by the local authority, and whose by cheque.

The issue here, however, is those who are poor but don't qualify for free school meals.

There is no presumption here that a child will eat a school lunch.  Many bring sandwiches, and there's no stigma attached.  In fact, the poor quality and cheap ingredients of school meals means that it's more often the middle classes who opt to bring their own.

In primary school, paid-for meals are booked and paid for a week in advance.  No money, no meal.

That's not to say that any child will be allowed to go without lunch: a dinner register is taken alongside the attendance register and a hungry child will be fed.  In fact, I've had several retrospective bills for school lunches after my son has left his sandwiches at home.  But a parent of a primary school child who sent in neither money nor sandwiches on a regular basis would find themselves receiving a phone call from the school's designated child protection officer fairly quickly. And rightly, in my opinion, because if a child isn't getting fed there's a serious cause for concern.

High school, though-staggered lunchtimes, scattered dining arrangements-frankly, I'm not convinced they'd know if a child wasn't being fed.