http://www.mrwhippy.com.au/index1.htm

MISSION STATEMENT

"To maintain our status as a leading supplier of good quality ice cream products for an exciting, real value, great service & conveniently located Experience”

VISION STATEMENT:

“To make money and have fun”

Maybe it's classed as a perk *g* My school (35 years ago) had an ice cream van that was parked infront of the school for about 10 months of the year, but inside the grounds...???

Perhaps our confusion is based on an erroneous assumption on my part. In the US, students are not allowed to leave school grounds without permission (not that this keeps it from happening) so an ice cream van parked in front of the school would simply be mean. Perhaps that is not true in the UK?

In secondary school we could leave school during breaks. I am also sure I remember an ice-cream van coming round and parking in the playground, but maybe that was for fêtes or something...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/nolpda/ukfs_news/hi/new...

ice cream vans - 99 goes with it...

(researches)
No, other schools have them in the playground or the school drive, possibly as it is safer than having the kids all running out into the road. But it does sound as if people are complaining now that they are bad for children.

"This school also allowed an ice cream van to park in the playground at lunch time,
providing hot dogs as well as ice cream throughout the lunch break. A tuck shop also opened on an occasional basis" http://www.oxfordjournals.org/our_journals/he...

"A COMPREHENSIVE school in the Welsh county with the best reputation for healthy meals is allowing an ice cream van onto its grounds to sell junk food to pupils.
The van spends every lunch hour parked by the playing fields, inside the gates of Bryngwyn School, in Llanelli." http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/...

At a boarding school, kids would be less likely to leave school grounds right? (All I have to base this on is Harry Potter though really, so what do I know). So why have a van rather than some other source of ice cream? Perhaps this is all a ruse to introduce the phrase "Mr Whippy van"?

The school tuck shop will probably "just" sell non-perishables and things that don't require special storage conditions, to keep the costs to a minimum.

Mr Whippy icecream (the traditional fare, not the new-fangled ready-made Magnums etc) is totally different to tuck-shop ice cream - addict talking.
Depending on individual school(board)/governors' rules, a Mr Whippy can indeed set up within school grounds (normally they're just conveniently parked along the main exit routes from school and for those having missed the BRIGHTLY coloured van there's always the jingle calling them, calling them...)
For boarding schools though it would probably have to be organically-sourced, dairy-free fairtrade sugarfree blandness with definitely NO hundres-and -thousands :)
Hubby says my little face still lights up when I discover that a Mr Whippy has set up his van in front of our local garden centre... ah well, it's my ONE weakness :)

At my old school in the UK we had about 5 tuckshops (I worked in one of them) and then we had an ice cream van that parked at the school gates.
Because we were not allowed to leave the school grounds until we were in sixth form a teacher would be at the gate making sure that students were just going to the ice cream van and then going back into school with their sweets, hotdogs or ice creams.
Mmmm god i'm getting hungry now!

But the ice cream vans are owned by the ice-cream seller who drives the van, he just drives to the school and parks up. I think that's what the original question is getting at. The school wouldn't own the van, if the school wanted to sell ice cream they'd do it in the cafeteria.

No it was owned by some crazy guy who did it for a living. I think that he had to stay at the gate because he was external and therefore couldn't sell anything on school grounds. But all Mr Whippy vans are owned by people and not schools as far as I know.

Logically I suppose the school probably doesn't own the van, but a child would see its presence as part of the attraction. I guess what bewildered us was the idea that a school would allow an ice cream van to park outside and sell to the children. Obviously that was just my American mindset (and perhaps my daughter's German mindset) getting in my way again. Thanks!

Selkie, I was at first shocked to read about ice-cream vans plying their trade near schools and thought ugly thoughts along the lines of tsk, typical, no wonder they're the Fat Man of Europe, etc.
Then again - in Germany, school children tend to make their own way to school, a way plastered with Kiosks of all description, selling not only sweets and ice-lollies, but also fags, Flachmänner, Panini-Sammelbildchen and the like.
So maybe an icecream-van in front of the school is a lot more harmless than the places German children are lured into for their sugar-fixes.

German schools just wouldn't allow
a) the ice cream van to park on school grounds or
b) allow students in middle school out to one parked in front

because if anything happened, the school or the teacher doing break supervision would be liable.
(Naturally, we all sneaked out to the baker on the corner, but if anyone happend to break a leg that wasn't the school's fault.)

German schools in my time had a small tuck shop selling dairy products, subsidized school milk drinks and there was a big fuss about whether they should be allowed to sell sweets. The shop was operated by the janitor.

When I was back for 10 years Abitur (more than 10 years ago now), they also had a small cafeteria, because there were more afternoon activities.

Would you deny a schoolboy his 99 flake?
You could have a guy come into a school with a tray (like in German cinemas), but most of the magic is the fact that it comes from a van with a guy playing rubbish music box music. It means that you know he's approaching from a mile off. It's all about Vorfreude.
I can't remeber if we had vans come onto the grounds, but I do remember them driving round housing estates etc. with the rubbish music. Always a pleasure on a hot day. At the school canteen you could buy Mr. Freeze, but it's not really the same as the Whipster conjuring up a 99 flake.
I am however horrified to hear that hot dogs and the like are being sold from ice cream vans. Look at the name "ice cream van" and then stick to it!
I don't see why a boarding school would be different to any other. They might want Mr. Whippy to pay them a fee for accessing the grounds, but children still have a sweet tooth.
I've never read Harry Potter, or seen the films, but I would imagine that it's a pretty rubbish starting point to take if you want to generalise about British boarding schools. There's no magic for a start.

@Selkie: I've got a load of 20+ years old Irish Girl's comics (Judy) with lots of stories about boarding schools. Even though rather oldfashoined even then, they might be more realistic than Harry Potter. (I'd be willing to part with them for some time, but I'd want them back). Just how old is your daughter?

I think that the German schools need to lighten up a bit really. I don't think that my childhood would have been the same without a good old Mr Whippy outside the gates. And yes at my one you could buy hotdogs with those horrible sweaty onions on top and we used to buy these rainbow sherbert straws and then have a sherbert fight with them (I got some in my eye one time that still makes me cringe in pain if I think about it) as far as I know all the schools in my area had their own Mr Whippy who used to park outside and the same guy from my school would drive down my street at 5 o'clock everyday playing his rubbish fairground music like the child catcher in chitty chitty bang bang!
The tuck shops at my school only sold chocolate, crisps and (warm) fizzy drinks so it was nice to get a lemon ice on a hot day at school, and as far as I know no child was injured as a result of getting an ice cream :-)

CJ: Those sound like wonderful comics, but I imagine she would fine us both wonderfully quaint if we offered them to her to read. She is 12 and happily knows everything already at the moment, though that is sure to change.

Don't get me wrong: US cafeterias sell plenty of ice cream bars, and student-run snack bars make up for the rest. They just wouldn't allow students to leave school grounds to buy an ice cream for fear of passels of lawyers suing for whatever occurs to them to sue about (gum on the bottom of kids shoes, sunburn, etc.).

I read "Mr. Whippy Van" and really didn't know what to expect in this thread.

@spinatwachtel: Funny that you mentioned sugar fixes. All I can say is, watch the mail.

RE 19: I know you thought Selkie was exaggerating, but through the teacher grapevine I did just hear about a lawsuit brought by parents whose child had ruined an expensive pair of suede shoes by getting illicitly chewed gum on them at school. All I can say is, it happened in New York city, probably one of the fancy-schmancy parts. Those kind of lawsuits aren't a problem out where I live because children don't tend to wear designer shoes.

Wow, Amy, I thought I was exaggerating, but I must have been channeling petty, angry and arrogant New Yorkers instead.

Sorry, self-correction: that kind of lawsuit isn't a problem...

In my haste to create a good entry on this April 1st, I must have been careless.

Got me. Nicely done Amy.

Silly double posting

There was an ice-cream van just outside our school gates at lunch time which was tolerated by the school until the head realised that the crafty ice-cream vendor was selling individual cigarettes and a single match at (I seem to remember) 7p each. Of course he was not checking that the kids he sold to were 16 or over. That caused a huge rumpus which I think ended up with the vendor being prosecuted, but the ice-cream van certainly disappeared after that.