A primary school allegedly refused to give a pupil a slice of toast after her mum forgot to pay the 20p fee.
The youngster, aged 6, had to go without while all of her classmates enjoyed their mid-morning snack, according to her upset mum.
"They gave every single child a slice of toast besides my daughter. I have never forgotten before. Could they not have just put a note in her book bag as a reminder? Or sent a text," wrote the parent in a post shared online.
The mum, who has always paid for toast in the past, forgot to pay the 20p-a-day fee for the rest of the term, as she discovered on the first day back after the half-term holiday.
She's now paid the total remaining cost online, including the money for the day she missed.
But she has questioned whether the school should have been more understanding.
"It's not the child’s fault, it was mine," the mum pointed out when she turned to Mumsnet for advice. Keen to hear other parents' opinions, she asked: "Is it fair to single them out? Toast for you, toast for you, NO toast for you, toast for you…."
One mum replied: "I hate this, children should never be excluded regardless, it's awful."
A second said: "That seems very insensitive of them."
Meanwhile, a third wrote: "We always give kids free toast at the school I work at if they have no money on their account."
But another thought: "They probably get people habitually forgetting to pay. This is your fault, not the school's."
Someone commented: "It's a snack, not a meal. I assume if the parent hadn't paid for a meal then they would cobble something together so the child wouldn't go without."
And a different reply suggested: "They probably thought you didn't want school snacks this term. I work in school and around half of all classes bring their own snack. They probably assumed as you hadn't paid for the start of term you were doing this."
Do you have a story to share? We pay for stories. Email us at yourmirror@mirror.co.uk
