As David Laws and his team have spotted:
In 2005, Ruth Kelly promised to ensure that at least 50p would be spent on healthy ingredients in primary schools, and 60p in secondary schools, but current Schools Minister, Kevin Brennan has since denied that such a minimum spend exists.
David Laws commented:
Ministers seem to have quietly dropped their commitment to a minimum basic level of funding for school meals. With food prices surging, this is going to mean a massive squeeze on the quality of meal which schools can afford.
The Government made that promise in 2005, before the huge increases we have seen recently in food prices. Those rises make it even more important that at the very least, those minimum amounts are being spent on ingredients.
Without more money being allocated for school food, it is now likely that quality will also suffer.
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4 Comments
Yet MPs can claim £20 per diem for food. Something very wrong with their priorities.
Interestingly, I taught in a Girls School for a few months last year where the Chef was a vegetarian, although she did offer one meat ‘main’. Nearly every pupil and most of the teaching staff took meals which were healthy, excellent and according to her, easy to keep within budget. She had also won awards for the quality of her food.
I can’t help feeling that this is a good solution towards providing quality to a price. Those children who are not vegitarians can presumably eat meat at home and this way they at least stand a chance of getting their 5 F&V a day.
I’ll admit to being a committed carnivore, but I didn’t miss my meat at lunchtime and although I often use restaurant themes in giving language lessons, I can see no signs of subliminal hunger in my lesson plans!
Martin’s plan sounds like a good one to me…
I also agree with Martin. I think meat consumption is going to peak & then decline. I myself am a vegetarian, but I recognise that other people are carnivores, only I recognise that eating 3 slabs of meat every day isn’t essential (obviously).
This is the future.