9. Key Findings
9.14 While some LEAs and private consultancies offered comprehensive monitoring and
support to schools, there is no statutory obligation for LEAs to offer this service nor
for schools to take up external monitoring.
9.15 The study found evidence that some schools with no external monitoring in place were
addressing all the issues that a monitoring service would cover, regularly checking that
their service complied with all the legal requirements.
9.16 Other schools were less vigilant. Even schools which subscribed to LEA monitoring
agreements were falling short in some aspects of the service they provided. Most
importantly, schools were failing to ensure that the meals offered conformed to
nutritional standards and that pupils were able to purchase an adequate meal for the
price of the free school meal. In cash cafeterias, pupils entitled to free school meals
were free to select meals which contained no protein item or any item of either fruit or
vegetable origin.
Implications of delegation for nutritional standards and the quality of food provision in
school
9.17 The delegation of budgets coincided in many LEAs with the introduction of nutritional
standards, which together with a number of concurrent health initiatives, have all played
a part in improving the quality of meals recently.
9.18 The study found evidence that some schools had used delegation to make substantial
improvements in the quality of the meals they offered. By renegotiating with their
existing supplier, by finding new suppliers or creating their own meal service, schools
had worked to offer meals which exceeded the minimum nutritional standards and,
equally importantly, which pupils were pleased to eat. At the same time, many central
services were also pursuing policies to provide healthier meals and to encourage take-
up.
9.19 However, the study also found evidence that delegation had led to a greater emphasis in
some schools on commercial viability, to ensure that meal provision was self-financing.
To encourage pupils to buy meals, cafeterias were offering popular, but not necessarily
nutritionally well balanced, menus. Pupils, particularly those on free school meals who
took a meal everyday, could be faced with a very limited choice of meals. With no
statutory monitoring of nutritional standards, there is little incentive to conform to
legislation or to improve the take up of quality meals, particularly for schools in which
meal provision is a low priority.
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