The programme, due to be aired at 8pm and titled ‘The School Dinner Scandal’, follows Jamie Oliver's high-profile campaign to improve school meals, the millions of pounds that were pumped into improving school kitchens canteens and tough minimum standards on food and nutrition that were set.
Reporter Tazeen Ahmad will then focus on worrying signs that the health, nutrition and take-up gains are being undermined.
A hundred and ninety local authorities and 108 academy schools responded to a survey by the programme, which found wide variations in the amount spent on dinners, with some schools opting out of providing a daily hot meal altogether.
Dispatches visits one English primary school where the only hot food available to children is supplied by volunteers working from the local village hall.
About half of children now attend academy schools, which are largely free from local authority control. Education Secretary Michael Gove exempted them from the nutritional standards introduced by the last government, promising that standards would not deteriorate.
However, the Dispatches survey provides worrying new evidence about previously banned products being made available to pupils. The programme speaks to one catering supplier who says that once again many schools are now looking to source cheap, low-quality products.
It reports on a parent who did his own detective work to discover that out of the £2.10 a meal charged by one council, only 59p was being spent on ingredients.
Dispatches then draws a link, saying that as a consequence many children are voting with their feet, either bringing their own packed lunches or going outside school and eating from take-aways.
Dispatches also looks at local authorities that are trying to fight back and restrict the growth of fast food outlets near schools, and reveals the national chain that is ‘reluctant to take no for an answer’ in this dispute.
The Local Authority Caterers’ Association (LACA) has issued statement on the programme.
In it the organisation says: “Despite campaigns by LACA, other children’s health and welfare organisations, campaigners, Jamie Oliver and even a survey by the School Food Trust (SFT) which provided clear evidence that the standards were not being applied across all school food provision in some academies, this did not sway the Secretary of State.
“Instead, in July, the Government commissioned another independent inquiry into school food, which is not due to report back until sometime in 2013.
“In LACA’s view, this will just allow more time for the slippage back to old ways to accelerate and for positive messages about healthy eating to be undermined.”
The statement added: “It (Dispatches) will apparently feature a parent who discovered that out of a school meal price of £2.10 per meal, 59p was the spend on ingredients. Hopefully this will be put in context by the programme on the basis that the bulk of the cost of producing a school meal is both labour and overheads and that 59p is not comparable to high street prices due to the availability to school caterers of trade prices and economies of scale.”
Dispatches reporter Tazeen Ahmad also talks to Steve Quinn, the managing director of school catering contract company Cucina, about his concerns.
He points to the lack of close monitoring of the Government's nutritional guidelines that are supposed to be mandatory in all maintained schools.
He says: “While companies like Cucina continue to invest in wide choices of quality food cooked 'from scratch' at every site, others are opting for cheaper, lower quality bought-in ingredients, to the severe detriment of good nutrition in schools.”