7. The impact of delegation on meals
the new policy was announced and was sure that the take of meals would plummet and
the kitchen would be forced to close. However, she had been surprised at how well the
alternatives, particularly jacket potatoes, had replaced the mainstay chips.
I thought we are never going to get this off the ground. The numbers are going to fall.........I
never thought [School] would go without its chips. We had to have these chips. Don’t break
down chipper...But now.they[pupils] don’t really bother.
7.30 However, LEA policies only covered schools within the central contract, so schools
outside the contract did not need to comply.
I know that the schools outside the contract do not have a healthy eating policy....the
pricing policy should on a par with the authority. Why should a child at the private contracting
school pay 30p for an apple where one within the local authority costs 20p? We have a policy
within the authority that healthy food is cheaper and high fatfood is a lot more expensive and
they should be complying with the local education policy which unfortunately they are not.
7.31 Individual schools reported improving the healthiness of meals. Some had negotiated
with their individual supplier to remove certain foods and additives from meals. Two
case study schools stressed the freshness of the food used for meals, with basic foods
used in menus so that additives were either completely eliminated or kept to a
minimum. One school cook summed up the school policy when he described his
routine for making pizza.
We start with a bag offlour and make all our own tomato sauces. We boil all our own ham
so you have quality. And you keep the cost down as well.
7.32 A case study school, which had used delegation to completely restructure the kitchen
and meal service, used the healthy eating option as its main selling point and felt that the
meal enhanced the status of the school locally.
We consulted parents to ask ifparents would be interested e.g., in the healthy eating option
‘No chips, no burgers’ and we gave sample menus to parents. There was a very strong
commitmentfrom parents.
Pupils comments about the healthiness of meals:
The meals are healthy because like in the Bolognaise, there are tiny bits of tomato and
mushroom and people don’t notice it and they think they are not having a very healthy meal
but it is.
7.33 School cooks and pupils talked of the need to encourage experimentation. When
serving out meals, cooks described giving pupils small portions ‘to try’ and pupils talked
of the need to increase the range of foods on offer to give the opportunity for people to
widen their experiences of foods.
We have apples and pears and bananas but they could have some different kinds offruit, like
grapefruit. Some children haven’t had grapefruit and it would give them a chance to try new
things.
7.34 Pupils discussing the sandwich service available in their school were critical that in
allowing pupils to choose four items, it permitted pupils to take too many sweet items.
Whilst some pupils were taking a sandwich, soup, cake and a drink, others were opting
for a cheesy dunker, orange drink, cake and crisps. Pupils disagreed on how healthy this
was, one feeling that there was too much freedom to choose cake and sweet things, the
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