Ha'penny milk and canteens

Ha'penny milk
One day at school we were told that we were going to have milk at lunch. It came in one-third pint bottles, with a cardboard top and a straw. We had to pay half pence a day for it; the poor and fatherless children got theirs free. I got mine free as I was the only child in the class whose father had been killed in the war.
L. Scarborough - Backyard Brighton

Canteens
The main course meals were served from a hotplate, at which we all had to queue. At lunch times, for example, we would line up to collect our food. Once the main course was over the queue would form again to collect the sweet of the day, taking with you the dirty main course plate.
Things really livened up then. If for some reason you had not eaten any part of the main course you were not asked why, nor could you scrape it off the plate into a waste bin. What would happen is your sweet would be tipped on top of whatever you had left.

So if you left cabbage - and how many kids liked that? - you would have, say, rice pudding poured over the top of it, and made to eat it, or six of the best. Of course, unless you were stupid, there was no way that you would take your main course plate back with anything on it. If you didn't like cabbage then stick it in your trouser pocket and throw it away when it was playtime, the same with any other food, like swede, that you may not have liked. There were quite a few boys in that school that had the continuous smell of cabbage on them!
Ron Piper - Take Him Away

Free school meals
We had a free dinner given to us two or three times a week at school, and I can still see to this day little oval white things floating in the gravy which I thought were maggots, but were in fact little bits of the butter beans in the stew.
Bert Healey - Hard Times and Easy Terms

When I went to Grammar school, we were so poor that I was given free uniform, books and dinners. I still squirm when I remember how I was shown up by a teacher who made me come out to collect my free dinner tickets.
Leila Abrahams - We're not all Rothchilds