| There is a catalogue of wrongs connected with school meals which only parents, teachers and school meals providers can address, writes a school meals worker... |
School meals under threat
WORKERS, JUNE 2005 ISSUE
Following Jamie Oliver's TV series on school meals, newspapers have carried a series of attacks on them which may endanger their already precarious existence. One pictured a single sausage and some jelly purporting to be an entire meal. School cooks and kitchen assistants are furious about the constant knocking of their service in the media. As mums of children in the schools they take great pride in their work and would never allow a meal like that to go out from their serving counter. But they are also well aware of a serious problem they see in schools — a large number of children are not getting the nutrition they need to grow into healthy adults.
Let's get a few more facts into this debate. There is now no national system of school meals. Instead, there is great variation in the provision of school meals and it is changing constantly from year to year.
Schools as businesses
Government intends that schools are run as individual businesses, which local councils only monitor. So it may be consortiums of head teachers who decide initially what kind of meals will be provided and who will provide them, whether contracted out or in-house.
The local council decides whether there is a "junk food" option offered, whether the meal is to be produced on site, "mother-kitchen produced" and reheated on site, or perhaps to consist only of packed lunches, as in Essex. The local council also decides on the price that will be charged and what proportion of it goes to any contractor they may use.
Councils keep a good part of school dinner money to use as they see fit. The contractor, if there is one, may only get about two-thirds. The school may receive back part of the other third, to use as it sees fit. The head teacher may, or the local council may, have other priorities than children's nutrition at lunch time. Funds may be allocated elsewhere.
However, the really crucial decisions about healthy eating are made at home, where children form their eating habits guided by parents. Parents also ultimately decide whether they will purchase school meals for their children. Where nutritious meals are on offer the children are likely to reject them in favour of junk food, given the opportunity. After starting to make his programme, Jamie Oliver rightly recognised that re-educating children and their parents about food was key to the problem. He offered only one option to the children, a healthy option which was often refused by children despite its quality. After a great deal of effort to educate the children in the classroom and their parents at home, quite a few of them were willing to try the food, but the word in Greenwich is that there was still much waste. Will the situation slide back to "normal" once the media attention is gone?
Many councils require their school meals service to offer several options, including one consisting of processed food which is salty and not nutritious, like burgers and chips. The healthy option goes into the waste bin, much to the dismay and regret of school meals staff. Meanwhile increasing numbers of parents are choosing to provide packed lunches, usually of poor nutritional value when compared with hot meals. Low take-up threatens the very existence of school meals, leading some schools to use the kitchen space for other purposes and some contractors not to bid for work during the contracting process.
The cash injection promised by the government, earmarked for ingredients only, is an election gimmick, insecure, and wholly inadequate to address the size of the problem. Also, the idea that individual schools could organise fresh local produce from farmers in their area and prepare it on site, advocated by some green-thinking people, is simply not an option for the vast majority of schools which are in urban areas. Putting up the price of meals may well lead to lower take-up, already a problem, and the loss of contractors.
Lack of investment
School kitchens suffer from lack of investment, many using ridiculously old equipment. In some cases schools have decided to strip out their kitchens and use the space for classrooms or other functions. Sometimes a company wins a contract largely on the basis that they will install new equipment, with the proviso that they are allowed to raise the price of the food — something that happens mainly in secondary schools. Raising the price can lead to lower take-up and a downward spiral in the service.
There is a catalogue of wrongs connected with school meals which only parents, teachers and school meals providers can address. At its heart lies education and training, a working class looking after its own health. There is no quick fix. Trade unions can and must play a key role. Government intervention of the type we hear about at election time can only threaten the reputation and even the jobs of school meals staffs if fewer pupils take the meals, or if the contractors who employ them decide not to bid. School meals staff are certainly not the villains of the piece, but may stand to suffer.
Children also will suffer if school meals are replaced by pack lunches.
