School dinners drive 'picking up'

1:23pm Thursday 10th July 2008

Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver has said that the healthy school dinners campaign had "turned the corner" after new figures showed a rise in the uptake of meals in primary schools.

Research from the School Food Trust and the Local Authority Caterers Association (LACA) showed the number of primary school children eating dinners had risen for the first time since healthier meals were introduced.

Take up across English primary schools now stands at 43.6% - an increase of 2.3% on last year. The last time take up of school meals increased was in 2004 - the year before Oliver began his campaign for better quality school dinners.

Schools Secretary Ed Balls said: "Over three million children are eating school dinners - a rise of 50,000 on last year. We've turned a corner in primary schools and the steep fall last year in secondary schools has been halted. This is a testament to the hard work of catering staff on the frontline."

The chef, who has been campaigning for change for three years, said: "Naturally I'm massively encouraged by today's news. I always said this would take 10 years to really see results but it looks like the corner has been turned, certainly in primary schools, in just three years and that's a fantastic achievement.

"Overall, this is a good day for school meals and this news goes to prove that comments about kids not liking the proper real food and voting with their feet are inaccurate and unhelpful in the long-term."

After his campaign won huge public support, ministers banned junk food from school canteens and vending machines and in 2006 new rules to make food healthier were introduced in English schools.

But although the latest figures show promising signs for the primary sector, secondary schools are still not following the trend, with take up down 0.5% this year, the survey found.

In the past year, the School Food Trust and LACA have been working together on a number of joint initiatives to promote healthy meals to parents and children.