Schools in England must be compelled to offer pupils healthy food, not junk | School meals

It’s been almost a generation since Jamie Oliver’s four-part Channel 4 documentary series Jamie’s School Dinners revealed the unhealthy reality of the food served to students at lunch; these included – as everyone knows – the fatty, meaty light Turkey Twizzlers. It proved to be a shameful and effective intervention. The ensuing Feed Me Better campaign led then-prime minister Tony Blair to promise to make school lunches more nutritious and give schools more money to do so, given that the average lunch cost just 45p at the time.

Is the problem solved? Unfortunately no.

School meals have been suffering at the hands of politics and economics for almost 50 years. Margaret Thatcher’s Education Act of 1980 abolished minimum nutritional requirements for school lunches. From 1988, public services, including schools, had to put contracts out to mandatory competitive tendering; this has led to economics being prioritized over the quality of the food provided.

Nutrition standards were restored under Labor, as reflected in school meal standards in 2009. But shorter breaks since 1995, the conversion of many public schools to standards-free academies since 2000, and the elimination of the school lunch grant in 2011 have made it harder to provide healthy food for students.

The Covid pandemic has led to 77% of schools in England making lunch breaks even shorter and 44% serving less healthy meals. Recently, extreme food cost inflation and rising staff costs have led some private sector providers to offer cheaper meals that are often less nutritious. When you add in the growing popularity of food eaten on the go, and the difficulties local councils are strapped for cash and schools are having in ensuring pupils have access at lunch, it seems very daunting.

Fortunately, Labor ministers recognize the current problems as well as the fact that school lunches are a particularly important source of food for poorer pupils. The Department for Education and the Department of Health and Social Care are jointly reviewing school meal standards; This is the first renovation in ten years. Their role: To ensure that students’ food is nutritious, given government guidance. promise “raising the healthiest generation of children ever”.

Ministers are also under pressure to do something else: ensure standards are actually enforced, whatever they say about the quality of school meals. D’Arcy Williams, chief executive of Bite Back, the food charity founded by Jamie Oliver, said: “The real problem here is that no one is clearly responsible for enforcing school meal standards – and in practice this means they are not enforced at all.”

This helps explain the apparent rise in popularity of students using “grab and go” tactics for lunch: picking up often unhealthy portable foods like pizza and sausage rolls to eat on the go while socializing with friends.

There are a variety of ideas in the mix. Should Ofsted’s remit be expanded to ensure that inspectors visiting schools assess food provision as well as the quality of education? Want to give the Food Standards Agency some oversight? Do you trust school leaders to ensure good practice? Whichever accommodation method is chosen, it should help ensure that schools serve healthy foods to students, not junk food.