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The
Health Education Trust (HET) is a registered charity dedicated to initiating and supporting work with young people to encourage the growth of healthy lifestyles.
The Health Education Trust (HET) is the managing organisation for SNAGNewsOnline and www.healthedtrust.com. These services are made available for the benefit of those with concerns about food in schools across the UK. The underlying message is always the same: children need and are entitled to a healthy, high quality food service at school and there are always ways each of us can help progress towards achieving that for them.
SNAGNewsOnline allows a broad range of views to be expressed and therefore they are not necessarily the views of HET, it’s individual staff, or SNAG (UK).
| We welcome contributions for the newsletter and website, so please email your ideas or suggestions to: het@joeharvey.fsnet.co.uk or jennette@healthedtrust.com; or call Joe direct to discuss further on 01789 773915. |
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Joe
Harvey Has His Say!
Has there ever been such a time of opportunity and threat for food services in our schools? We can all recognise the huge increase in concern over food and nutrition issues in schools, which is reflected in a flood of media articles and interviews. Why are so many children content with a diet so lacking in fruit and vegetables? Why are the menus in our schools so clearly reliant on pre-prepared, poor quality ingredients? The government knows the cost of the growing levels of childhood obesity and the early onset on Type 2 Diabetes to the nation’s economy and is making concerned noises, but what is actually being done to improve the situation and is it likely to be effective?
In April 2001 a raft of powerful new initiatives came into force. The most important
of which were:
• Minimum nutritional standards – For the first time since 1980 there are universal requirements that insist on an appropriate balance and variety in the offer to children in all schools in England and Wales.
• A Duty to Provide – renewing the obligation, removed in 1980, on the school meals budget holder to provide not just a free school meals service (FSM) but also a paid service too.
• Delegation of Budgets – that is delegation direct to the schools, giving them accountability for the provision and quality of the food service.
So two years on and what difference have these changes made? Have they answered the questions or posed new ones? I would argue that while there have been some remarkable localised and individual examples of good practice, the package
from government was incomplete, lacked rigour and commitment, and failed to understand the underlying reason why the school food service has always struggled to deliver satisfaction. Let’s take a closer look at the chaos and confusion that is schools catering right now!
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Minimum Nutritional Standards are ‘a good thing ‘ but were only ever meant to be the minimum standard below which no one should fall. In order for them to provide their inherent promise they need to be strictly monitored. Such a monitoring system you would expect to be an integral part of the regulations but sadly the reverse is the case. There is no national monitoring system overseen by government to check and keep data on the impact of their own initiatives. Under delegation of budgets it is illegal for local education departments (LEA’s) to retain money for a monitoring role, and so it is left to schools themselves, or the caterers delivering the service to self-police the standards. Such arrangements have no credibility and mean that it is impossible to judge success or failure of the standards.
Ofsted Primary Monitoring Programme 2003 Autumn However there is the sound – better late than never – of the cavalry coming over the hill. This autumn Ofsted are conducting a survey of a selection of primary schools to examine broad issues of principle…has the school adopted a ‘whole school approach’? Is what is taught in the classroom reflected in the food service provision? Are the messages to the children consistent? Good questions to ask, and ones that every school should have been asking of themselves for some time. Perhaps asking such questions would have stopped some of them becoming involved in thinly disguised marketing programmes for Walker’s crisps and more recently for Cadbury’s. It is hard to believe that head teachers who sanction the collection of chocolate wrappers in school time did not see that their actions are a tacit endorsement of the products. Cadbury’s with a multi-million pound marketing budget and massive branding power, do not need, and should not get, the support of schools. One might ask why there is not clear govt/LEA guidance on avoiding damaging involvement in inappropriate campaigns, which so clearly cut across Department of Health funded ‘Healthy School Standards Scheme ‘ programmes and the ‘free fruit scheme’ for 4-6 yr olds.
DfES Secondary Schools Monitoring Programme 2003 Autumn A more detailed and comprehensive assessment of practice in secondary schools will be undertaken by DfES later this year and it is only to be regretted that no baseline data was collected in 2001 so a comparison could be made. However it is still likely to be the most important report in recent times and one which I expect to show a very wide range of quality and practice from excellent to disgraceful!
That these surveys are taking place is encouraging and, if they are a beginning rather than an end in themselves, should concentrate minds, and raise the profile and importance of a high quality food service in schools, not only for improving health (and education potential) but also as part of the broader aim of valuing children through the whole operation of the school. |
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Delegation of Budgets It was never the intention of government when delegating meals budgets to improve the service. It was a part of the political strategy to increase the overall level of delegation to the mythical figure of 90%. As a result the degree of planning that went into it was totally inadequate and a number of the outcomes now visible were entirely predictable. The benefits of delegation are the transfer of accountability to the school, which effectively removes their option to blame someone else if the service is poor. In reality there never was much justification for such a stance, now there is even less. Many schools are using their delegated powers with great skill and to improve both menus and the environment in which their children eat. However there are LEA’s and individual schools who are cynically running down their services, creating such a poor service and allowing such easy identification of a FSM child (so stigmatising them) that they minimise even the uptake of meals to those families on benefit. It was never the intention of David Blunkett (then Secretary of State for Education) that this government should preside over the fragmentation of the school meals service when he announced five years ago his intention to shore up standards and safeguard the service against decay, but there is an urgent need for action if that is not to become the reality. In a number of counties small schools with services that are not commercially viable are becoming threatened as the cross subsidy that used to operate within the contract from larger secondary/primary schools is lost as the latter leave to do their own thing or demand a greater return for their business.
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Investment, investment, investment Who first said there is no such thing as a free lunch? It was King Lear who declared ‘nothing will come of nothing…speak again!’ Both, in different ways spell out the real reason we are in this unnecessary, unhappy situation. For as long as I have been in education, teaching or advising, it has been a Cinderella service with some questioning its importance and most demanding that it make economies while improving quality. Investment in equipment and facilities has been so far below the acceptable minimum that thousands of kitchens have kit that is inappropriate and obsolete and dining rooms with furniture that is damaged and decor that is decaying. The problem of delegation exacerbates the situation of course because while some schools are well equipped others are close to derelict. Few small schools could possibly deal with a repairs and renewal programme – the costs would be prohibitive. It would have been logical to upgrade the worst kitchens prior to delegating responsibility, that can and should still be done if we do not want to see a steady succession of kitchen closures. The amount of money allowed for a free school meal is inadequate, it should be increased to allow for the provision of good quality ingredients and a minimum value fixed by government. It is strange to realise that this is a benefit yet has a widely varying value – that can’t be right!
In conclusion, I believe that there is time to save what we
have and with political courage, to substantially improve it. If the government wants children’s diets to improve, if it believes ‘five-a-day’ really does matter, then it must move quickly and decisively to stop its well-intended, but badly executed, poorly financed plans for food in schools from going disastrously wrong!
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Joe Harvey,
Director of the Health Education Trust
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In this Issue: Click on links below for each article
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Summer
2003 Newsletter Page One
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