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22nd January 2008

York Education Bosses Plot to Boost School Dinner Uptake

Education bosses in York are meeting on Friday to discuss ways to boost the uptake of school meals in the city.  Currently, less than a third of schoolchildren in York are eating school dinners and the city has a school meal take-up rate of just 32.5 per cent.

These figures show a significant decline since 2003-4, when over 38 per cent of the city’s schoolchildren were eating school meals. However, the figures have improved on statistics recorded during the last summer term, which saw the percentage of York’s primary schoolchildren eating school meals drop to just 31 per cent. Generally, the number of children eating school meals drops during summer as many students favour cool packed lunches.

Despite clawing back from a summertime low, York’s figures of 32.5 per cent still show a notable downturn. This couldn’t have come at a worse time for education bosses in the city, as the Government plan to introduce a national performance indicator on the uptake of school meals from April 2008.

Prior to this meeting, the North Yorkshire young people overview and scrutiny committee conducted a thorough review of the school meals service and concluded that the in-house catering service provided a good service to pupils.

During the meeting, it is thought that education bosses will be examining four options. These options are maintaining the present service, boosting the number of transported meals, looking into the option of regenerated frozen meals or passing on the responsibility of school meals to the schools themselves.

North Yorkshire County Caterers are currently the supplier of school meals in North Yorkshire and have been for some time. They distribute school meals to 316 primary schools and 31 secondary schools throughout the county, which adds up to a massive 3,415,200 meals in the last academic year alone.

York education bosses must meet targets imposed by the School Food Trust, which was established in 2005 by the Department for Education and Skills to boost the quality of school food. These targets asked schools to boost their school lunch uptake to 46.5 per cent by March 2008 and 52.5 per cent by March 2009.

Source:

York Press