Pupils should have access to free healthy school dinners, says survey

ATL surveyed 870 teachers, lecturers, support staff and school leaders in schools across the United Kingdom about food in schools. Tom Huck, a primary teacher from Boston, Lincs, said: "Free school meals would benefit children in many ways; healthy hot meal each day, some control over their diet, improved table manners, improved tolerance of each other, hopefully better behaviour in the afternoon [and a] good social experience." A primary teacher from Hampshire, said: "There should be a much higher priority on providing healthy appetising school meals. The budgetary allowance for each meal is pitiful." 73% of respondents believe that an initiative to control what food schools can sell to pupils should be rolled out, similar to The Schools (Health Promotion and Nutrition) (Scotland) Act 2007. This would control, amongst other things, the sale of more than three deep fried items in a single week, the sale of chocolate products, sweets and savoury snacks such as crisps. In the schools that have a vending machine or tuck shop, a quarter of staff said their schools allowed the sale of fizzy drinks and over a fifth sold chocolate bars and crisps. Meanwhile over one in seven respondents believe that the on-site catering facilities at their school are not adequate for their schools needs and almost 10% say they do not have any on-site catering facilities to prepare school meals at all. Almost 35% of respondents stated that their school has received complaints from pupils about the standard of food their school prepares. Furthermore, 62% of these complaints from pupils had been that they disliked the food offered, 45% felt there wasn't enough choice and almost 16% felt that the choice of food was not healthy enough. And half of respondents believed that pupils are taught enough about where food comes from, and 55% believe that pupils already learn enough about nutritional values. However, almost 20% stated that their school does not have the facilities to provide practical cookery lessons. ATL's general secretary, Dr Mary Bousted, concluded: "Naturally, budget constraints determine how many free school meals can be offered. However, we are pleased to see that the government is now recognising the importance of free school meals by backing plans to provide them to 600,000 school children from low-income families in England from September 2010-September 2011, which should lift 50,000 children out of poverty."