There are many great things about the comprehensive school my children attend. Their teachers are inspiring, their grades are good; they enjoy going in and have made lifelong friends, as have I, thanks to a strong community. There’s just one thing that lets it down, and that’s the food.
My daughters largely refuse to eat it. They report that the options are pitiful and the queue for lunch is so long – there are around 1,600 children at the school – that they can’t eat with their friends if they wait to buy a meal. Apparently, the only viable option is to go to the “snack shack” and order a greasy slice of pizza or chicken nuggets. According to them, a lot of their friends just eat a cookie or a brownie for lunch. My daughter Florence has announced she is not eating any of it and is going to do her own packed lunches, making me a shopping list of cottage cheese and avocados.
I try to explain to my daughters that if they simply eat sugar at lunch, this will not sustain them nor help them tackle algebra, let alone Shakespeare. You don’t have to be a nutritionist to understand that a “lunch” consisting of a cookie or a brownie will not help anyone concentrate in a 120-minute lesson of double science – nor will it do their teeth or their health any good.
So I wasn’t surprised when I read this week that many secondary schools are failing on healthy eating guidelines. The study of 391 secondary schools by Jamie Oliver’s food charity Bite Back found that more than half of state secondary schools are serving fast food such as burgers and nuggets more than twice a week, the recommended amount. At 206 of the schools analysed, products that are high in fat, sugar or salt that are meant to be banned – such as crisps, biscuits and chocolate bars- were being sold as snacks, even at breakfast time.
What makes it harder is that I know how it is on the other side of the fence. My eldest child, Isaac, attended a private school until he was 16. The fees were around £13,000 a term (before the days of VAT), and so, as you’d expect, the quality of the food was very good. Each day he chose between delicious lunches such as a “luxury” fish pie or fusilli beef bolognaise. There was always an elaborate dessert on offer, such as a homemade strawberry cheesecake.
Sybilla and her son Isaac. He attended a private school until he was 16 and the fees were around £13,000 a term (before the days of VAT)Even we parents envied the meals they had, and I was always excited about the match teas put on when he was doing a team sport. There were cucumber and smoked salmon sandwiches and scones with clotted cream and Tiptree jam.
But when he joined his sisters at their state school for his A-Levels, he swapped his nutritional lunches for a sandwich meal deal and crisps with a fizzy drink at the local Co-op. As sixth formers, they had the option of going off campus to grab some lunch. They were even ordering McDonald’s on Uber Eats to be delivered to the sixth form block on occasion, though this practice was quickly shut down. I had no regrets about sending him to state school, and neither did he – but I did wring my hands remembering the salad bar he used to have access to, that would feed them mozzarella and tomato salad with fresh basil – dream on.
A friend of mine whose child attends an independent school in Buckinghamshire tells me the lunch menu includes Beef massaman curry with coconut, cardamom and Moroccan chicken thigh with Fattoush salad, charred lemons and garlic, followed by coconut sponge with mango topping or berry and white chocolate cheesecake for pudding. Unsurprisingly, her son is looking forward to going back to school in a week’s time on the basis that the food isn’t just very good – it’s restaurant-level good.
The reputation of state schools in England has never been better. In the last ten years, they have recorded massive performance improvements, rising through league tables at a considerably faster rate than private schools. But nutrition is just as important as teaching. They should go hand in hand.
Private schools benefit from smaller numbers, meaning there’s less of a rushed conveyor belt system at lunchtime – but also, vitally, they spend more on their ingredients and the quality of the provider.
The Bite Back report comes ahead of a major expansion of free school meals in schools. From September, all pupils from a household receiving universal credit will qualify, regardless of income. This is to be applauded, but not if the food served continues to be cheap, unhealthy junk. The Government spends, on average, £2.60 to £3.45 per school dinner – in France, it’s £6.
Young people keep being told about healthy choices, but our reliance on fast food and sugar is going nowhere, and secondary schools are apparently fuelling this rather than challenging it. It’s abhorrent that children are eating pizza, nuggets and crisps at school, or going home on an empty stomach. It’s high time the Government applied the same focus to raising the bar in terms of school food. It doesn’t need to be elaborate or expensive; it just needs to be healthy.
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