News

WHY SCHOOL FOOD MATTERS
A local debate held on Friday 16th May at Richmond Theatre

Parents and staff from primary and secondary schools in the Richmond and Kingston boroughs were invited to attend the debate alongside other interested parties. This resulted in good attendance and broad representation from parents, catering companies, staff, governors, nutritionists and council.

The event was chaired by writer, broadcaster and former President of the Soil Association, Jonathan Dimbleby. Speakers included Prue Leith (School Food Trust), Jeanette Orrey (Dinner Lady and School Meals Advisor to Food for Life Partnership), Tony Cooke (Year of Food and Farming), Chris Collins (RHS Campaign for School Gardening and Blue Peter Gardener), Jackie Schneider (Merton Parents) and Roger Sheard (Bradford City Council). After two hours of discussion, the programme concluded with a Q & A session. This report summarises the key points made by speakers and throughout the morning, and next steps made at the debate’s conclusion.

Introductory Speeches

Stephanie Wood (Campaign Director, School Food Matters)

As an introduction to the morning, Stephanie outlined the campaign’s six basic goals – every school should have:

  • kitchens capable of preparing fresh and healthy food
  • a commitment from school meal providers to supply food from local and sustainable sources – with £2bn spend on food in the public sector per annum, the environmental and economic benefits of local, sustainable sourcing would be significant
  • cooking and growing programmes to enable children to build a positive relationship with food as a core life skill
  • a link with a local farm
  • lunchtime in a pleasant, fully equipped environment – rather than noisy and unsettled environments with extensive queuing and food served on plastic ‘airline trays’
  • a designated champion from staff or governors and from the school council

Stephanie stated that the campaign started locally through her own interest as a parent at a school with low quality school meals and low uptake. Since then it has expanded to a regional campaign in Richmond and Kingston, following her discussions with 32 schools in the two boroughs. Given the importance of the issue, the campaign is rapidly becoming one of national significance.

Zac Goldsmith (Environmental Campaigner & Director, The Ecologist)

Zac stated that the school food issue is close to the top of the political agenda, citing that Great Britain has more obese children than any other country in Europe and how statistics also show how poor mental health is linked with bad diet.

In addition, Zac pointed out worrying examples of children’s lack of understanding about where their food comes from - including one case of eleven year old girls in London assuming that cows lay eggs. He went on to point out that within the education that children receive at school, there is nothing more basic than the need to learn about food.

Zac stated that there would also be environmental benefits of the School Food Matters campaign, and stated that the Food For Life Partnership had reduced total food miles by 70% since its inception.

In conclusion Zac reported a lack of national leadership in addressing the objectives of the campaign, but that there are pockets of inspirational stories and stated that the issue needs to owned at council level.

Jamie Oliver (TV chef and campaigner for healthy food in schools) by video

Jamie stated that three years on from his TV series about the subject, school dinners have never been more important, pointing out that a lot has been achieved but that there are still many problems. In supporting the campaign he said that it only takes a few people to change a school or a handful of schools, and to drive councils and the government into making positive change.

Jamie said there would be a follow up to his TV series, and stated his desire to see decent meals on the plates of school children over the next 10 years.

Discussions Groups – chaired by Jonathan Dimbleby

Discussion 1: ‘Improving the Quality of School Meals’

Jeanette Orrey (Dinner Lady and School Meals Advisor to Food for Life Partnership)
Jackie Schneider (Merton Parents for Better Food in School)

Jeanette was a catering manager in Nottinghamshire, who was used to serving poor quality school food, including ‘pork hippos’ and ‘cheesy feet’ to children – food that even the staff refused to eat. Resolving to change this, in 2002 she started buying cheap cuts of meat, milk and other produce directly from local farmers to cook properly, at a cost of 70p per meal. Jamie Oliver was so impressed with these results he started his own TV campaign. In 2003, working with Lizzie Vann (founder of Organix baby food company), Jeanette created the Food For Life report of 2003, and became School Meals Advisor to the Food for Life Partnership (www.foodforlife.org.uk).

Since then Jeanette has visited 900 schools to drive the Food for Life campaign to create fresh, locally sourced meals for children.

Jackie Schneider is a mother and has been a teacher in the London Borough of Merton for 18 years. As a teacher she took reception children to lunch in the school hall and witnessed the ‘awful’ food, which often ran out before all children were fed. Her complaints were not welcomed, despite school governors and staff acknowledging that the food was very poor. It took the Jamie Oliver campaign for other parents to realise that change was needed. Through successful campaigning Jackie recruited 150 parents, representing every school in the borough, to a meeting to initiate a campaign for change, and a three-point strategy was put in place:

  • To get kitchens built in schools and cook good quality food from good ingredients
  • To enhance dining rooms – remove noise, queuing and rushed eating
  • Lunch to be seen as an integral part of the child’s education

Jeanette and Jackie shared some of their key learning:

  • Involve dinner ladies and the school council in learning and decision-making.
  • Allow children to sit with their friends – do not split those with lunchboxes from those with school meals.
  • Do not serve food on ‘prison trays’ – use real crockery and cutlery.
  • Parents are a ‘huge hurdle’ when they give children junk food in lunchboxes saying their ‘kids don’t eat healthy food’. Both cited many examples of children eating food that their parents did not expect them to enjoy.
  • Don’t use the word ‘healthy’ with children, just serve tasty, well cooked food.
  • Cross economic barriers with proper food – 2.5m children are below the poverty line and the school meal is the only decent meal they get in a day.
  • Don’t expect lower income families to be happy with poorer quality food.
  • Don’t lecture the lost generation of parents who were not taught how to cook and who tend to buy convenience food – work with them to help them.
  • Do not frighten children– they need to have a positive relationship with food.
  • Jeanette cited secondary school girls who do not eat breakfast or lunch ‘because they want to be a size zero’.

Discussion 2: ‘Cooking, Growing and Farm Links’

Prue Leith (Chair of the School Food Trust)
Chris Collins (Blue Peter Gardener and RHS Campaign for School Gardening)
Tony Cooke (Director, Year of Food and Farming)

Prue Leith pointed out that following the Jamie Oliver campaign the government set up the School Food Trust (SFT) and mandated ‘healthy’ school food. She has added her own intention to ensure food is delicious and that children will eat it. She talked through three initiatives:

  • FEAST – Food Excellence And Skills Training An initiative to teach cooks how to cook post the ‘Turkey Twizzler era’ and to learn about nutrition.
  • ‘Let’s Get Cooking’ – a lottery funded initiative to help schools have cookery clubs, including the training of volunteers, so that both children and parents learn to cook (www.schoolfoodtrust.org.uk). She pointed out that one school with no facilities or money made smoothies to sell to parents on parents’ evening, and used the proceeds to finance the next week’s ingredients. The lottery funding of £20m will only allow clubs to be set up in 5000 of the 24,000 schools in the country.
  • Million Meals Campaign – to drive uptake of school meals. Current uptake is 40% nationally vs. 65% in the 1960’s, and on average packed lunches are less healthy than school meals. Without enough uptake catering of fresh, good food in schools is not viable.

Prue stated that lunchtimes should be a time in school to teach children about good food, and reassured the forum that the SFT can help schools as they have known schools that have cracked every problem, and put people in touch with each other to learn best practice.

Chris Collins stated that growing food is a practical subject that works well with the National Curriculum, and that children are currently too removed from gardening. His objective is to get children touching soil, learning about soil, plants and growing their own produce. He pointed out that there are no negatives involved, that he always has positive feedback from children who learn to garden, and how valuable it is for both academic and non-academic children.

Tony Cooke hosts visits to his farm from inner city schools that have been very successful. He shared the following data from research for YFF:

  • 1.1m children have never visited a farm.
  • Only 20% of children have picked or eaten fruit from a tree.
  • On average, children spend 55 hours per week looking at a screen a total of one year
    by the age of six.

He expressed his concern that children are living in a virtual world, without real life experiences. He also pointed out that most children have only a connection with the end point of food supply – the supermarket, and how the growing and provision of food needs to be made real for them again.

Tony stated that there is great interest for growing food, explaining that before the Year of Food and Farming there were 7,500 growing schemes in schools, and this has gone up to 19,000 during the Year. Also, when B & Q announced their growing scheme, 5000 took up the scheme in just 4 days (www.yearoffoodandfarming.org.uk).

Discussion 3: ‘Making It Happen’

Roger Sheard (City of Bradford Metropolitan City Council)
David Tchilingirian (London Borough of Merton)
Tom Seery (Managing Director, ISS Caterhouse)

Roger Sheard discussed how Bradford Council transformed their school provision before the Jamie Oliver campaign, with an intention to provide the best quality food for children, regardless of whether they have fully functional kitchens or not. Food is fresh, locally sourced, non-GMO and free from hydrogenated fat. It is either prepared and cooked in conventional kitchens within schools or locally cooked, frozen and distributed to the schools that have only a ‘re-heating’ facility. He was proud to say there is 56% uptake of school meals in the borough, up 5% year on year (vs. national average of 40%).

Roger stated that Bradford’s view is that food is ‘part of the education, not somewhere that children go at lunchtime’ and that the borough retained nutritional guidelines for food, even when the Government abolished guidelines nationally.

David Tchilingirian pointed out the Merton Borough council have allocated £3m to build kitchens in the local schools and that 39 will be complete by 2010. He said that taster sessions are held with parents to drive uptake, and that there has been support across the borough in all economic groups – not just in the wealthier areas as some might expect.

Tom Seery explained that the principles at ISS Caterhouse are to provide traceable meat, organic milk, and free range eggs as part of their good food provision to schools. He admitted that this puts cost up, but school meal take up has been very good and this had been successfully implemented in another LEA prior to Merton awarding them the borough contract. He pointed out that he needed to introduce training for those catering staff that had formerly needed no craft skills, and that they had been re-trained under NVQ standards. He added that the cost of a meal is now 75 – 80p per day (vs. a national average of 30–52p per day), due to the higher quality, and said that this had been offset by the council and School Food Trust to date. He did, however, suggest that there should be a national price per meal, regardless of location, as an investment in the future.

Jonathan Dimbleby asked how to make each of the individual approaches discussed at the meeting more holistic. Roger answered that Local Education Authorities have corporate social responsibility, and that school meals should be a part of that due to their impact on the environment, the economy and on social benefits.

Any Questions?

Questions were taken from the audience and put to the panel.

Question 1:
What dialogue has there been with Sodexo, why are they not represented today, and can we not move to ISS Caterhouse?

Answer:
Stephanie Wood:
Several weeks ago Sodexo were invited to attend this debate, but were unable to do so due to a clash with their annual conference. It would have been an opportunity for them to see the desire in parents. Under Sodexo take up of school meals has increased, and they have responded well to the brief they were given by the council, which was to supply food for ‘re-heat’ facilities in schools. Food is currently sourced and prepared in a CPU in Wales prior to distribution to schools throughout the country. Sodexo are able to provide food for fully equipped kitchens, if they were in place in the borough. (It should be pointed out that the School Food Matters statistics refer to the previous contractor, Scolarest).

Tony Cooke:
Sodexo are committed to this agenda and to supporting the learning of children and schools, and it is working very well. However, we will not get an overnight shift unless the LEA shows an appetite for change.

Question 2:
As a parent at a Private Funded Initiative (PFI) school, we don’t own the contract, so how do we make changes?

Answer:
Jackie Schneider:
We had four PFI schools in Merton and it was a disaster with parents pulling their hair out and being told ‘there is nothing we can do’. There were three layers of sub-contractor bureaucracy and Scolarest were awarded the contract for 25 years. The Guardian ran a story and there was a massive push to get these schools involved. My advice is: collect evidence, talk to the Director of Education and talk to local newspapers and the councils will quickly come on side.

Prue Leith:
The government guidelines on what a ‘kitchen’ is are hazy. A PFI is different as the deal is all about money. There should be a government requirement on the size of kitchen and dining facilities – we need joined up government.

Tony Cooke:
I am afraid this is the future. The new government re-developers are PFIs, so pedal like mad to get round this issue as it should be a big opportunity to get the best for schools. Push this up the political agenda to get local, regional and national media involved.

Question 3:
The era of cheap food is over, so how do we achieve higher uptake of school meals as pressure on household and government budgets are higher? We need solutions for all schools, including small, out of the way and rural schools.

Answer:
Jeanette Orrey:
We are paying now what we should be paying for food. Government has to invest for the long term – and so do parents. School meals are not a ‘bolt on’, they are part and parcel of a child’s education. Food is so important for every child.

Prue Leith:
There are four points I would make:

  • The Million Meals campaign is in place to drive uptake.
  • The average child gets £8.40 per week in pocket money. It is estimated that £6 of that goes on junk food. Can we not persuade parents about food?
  • There is a band of children just above the free school meal threshold. If you have three children, that is costing these parents £6 per day.
  • How is it evaluated who gets free school meals, and should this be reassessed? You need to earn less than £15,500 to qualify for free school meals, and yet the poverty line is £18,000.
  • What is sustainable and good for the environment is also good for the pocket. Peasants eat the healthiest food – lots of carbohydrate and vegetables, and less fat and meat.

Jackie Schneider:
Our research shows that if parents felt food was good and kids would eat it, they are happy to pay more for it.

Tony Cooke:
LEA’s seem to have a problem between low cost and value for money. The cheapest things are those in season. They should also change specifications to overcome wastage. If they changed meat contracts from distance based to local ones they would save 12%. If they changed distribution from 2–3 deliveries a week to one delivery of very fresh produce they would save money. There should also be flexibility around the nutrition guidelines so that rural schools could use local pubs to supply their meals.

Question 4:
The greatest benefit to a child’s health is in the antenatal period and the first year of life. A child eats 1095 meals per year, and 200 of those are at school. Is the responsibility not with parents, and how much can the school do?

Answer:
Jackie Schneider:
The school takes your child and looks after them. Therefore, they need to have the skills and facilities to feed them good food.

Prue Leith:
When teachers felt undervalued and stressed they walked out of supervising lunchtimes and it all fell apart – cafeteria eating was introduced and children started bring lunchboxes. Teachers do need time off, but they are ‘in loco parentis’ and they cannot say ‘it’s not my problem’.

Question 5:
How do I start the ball rolling with my school?

Answer:
Jackie Schneider:
Find a friend, approach the head and find the governor who is responsible, and say ‘How can we help you?’ You are doing the head a favour – you are not being disloyal. Talk to your cook and say ‘What do you need?’ or ‘How can I help?’ Use the playground mafia and PTA and go to the Merton website for help and ask them for advice (www.mertonparents.co.uk)

Stephanie Wood:
We need to work together to persuade the Local Education Authority that we need change.

Response from Richmond and Kingston Councils

The Chair then asked Councillor Stephen Knight (Richmond) if he supported the School Food Matters campaign. Councillor Knight said there was a great deal of commitment from the council but there as a problem with resource to re-build kitchens. He said he wanted the borough to be a leader in providing good food, to enable the children in the best performing primary schools in the country, also to be the best fed.

Jackie Schneider suggested that any changes made should be measurable, and Councillor Knight agreed with the Chair that he would welcome the School Food Matters campaigners coming to him and entering a dialogue to agree criteria for development.

In response to a suggestion by Councillor Knight that School Food Matters was politically motivated, Stephanie Wood pointed out that support for the campaign has been cross-party, with endorsements from Susan Kramer MP, James Page and Boris Johnson. She added that although the survey focused on just 32 schools, every school in the boroughs of Richmond and Kingston would benefit from the SFM campaign. She noted that parents at every school in both boroughs had been invited to the debate.

The panel agreed with the Chair that Councillor Knight’s suggestion of a party political agenda was ‘tiresome’ and both the Chair and Prue Leith stated that they would never have agreed to take part in the debate had there been any hint of party politics behind the SFM campaign.

Conservative Councillor Robert-John Tasker (Kingston) added that he would attempt to implement the School Food Matters plan if the party came into administration. Stephanie pointed out that both Directors of Education were invited to the meeting, but did not attend.

Jonathan Dimbleby concluded the session by stating that in an open society a council should encourage their Directors of Education to participate in such an important issue.

In conclusion and next steps.

Stephanie Wood concluded the day by saying the next step would be a petition to secure support for the campaign to demonstrate to both local authorities that there is wide support for the goals of SFM.