"The Greenwich inspired Jamie Oliver ‘Feed Me Better School’ campaign has
captured real health improvement, through reduced pupil use of asthma sprays,
improved behaviour, concentration and learning. This fits well with the citizen
centred approach to improved public health and service delivery outlined in the
recent Assembly consultation 'Making the connections: improved public services'.

" Action in Wales will require extra money in school budgets to improve the food
quality, staff training, and to create an all Wales catering advisory service to
ensure efficiency and effectiveness in transforming our school meals system.

Teaching, equipment and material costs of delivering practical food education will
also be essential.

A further letter has been sent to the Assembly suggesting that part of the
unallocated three year sum of £155m made available to Wales following the
recent Budget statement, from 2005/2006, should be used to fund national
action.

National action should include:

(a) the introduction of nutrient standards now available in Scotland (2), based
upon Caroline Walker Trust standards. Local procurement alone will not achieve
this. What is required is a Welsh standard to ensure that school meals contain
essential vitamins and minerals to ensure that children and young people grow
into healthy adults
(b) extra staff time and training will be required to prepare properly cooked food
from fresh ingredients (3).
(c) the extra costs of teaching, equipment and material required to deliver
practical food education for all pupils. Preferably as part of the national
curriculum

(d) establishing an all Wales catering advisory service to provide technical
support, guidance and the sharing of scarce expertise and experience between
county councils. (An arrangement along the lines of the £60m English Schools
Meals Trust would be an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy).
Rather than a fragmented approach to local authority school meals expenditure,
a team Wales approach is required to deliver excellent local services. Costs can
be shared in developing computerised catering management systems. For
example, the development of a Welsh recipe and staff training manuals based
upon Caroline Walker Trust nutrient standards. It would have an ability to
compare and monitor menu costs, efficient procurement, improved marketing
techniques, and share scarce expertise and experiences.

Nutrient standards

Although much attention has been given to the cost of food ingredients, the key
issue concerns the nutrient quality of food at the point of consumption Critically
England has now abandoned the ‘food group’ standard which the Welsh
Assembly copied in making its own regulations several years ago, and which has
demonstrably failed to tackle the current post code lottery. Unless common
nutrient standards are specified by the government, school caterers will have no
common bench mark to work from. Parents and pupils will have no means of
knowing or being reassured about the quality of school meals. Although some
local authorities and schools spend more on ingredient, others are spending less
because the Welsh Assembly Government appear unwilling to specify nutrient
standards. This contrasts with the Welsh Assembly Government approach to free
primary breakfasts – where they have been very particular in specifying national
standards”.

Notes

(1) WFA is a non-profit making knowledge based policy development network. It
brings together multi-disciplinary expertise to link all aspects of food policy in an
integrated way, which are disseminated in its quarterly newsletter. We aim to
provide a new perspective on food policy founded on the principle of informed
public participation in the policy development process.
(2)‘Hungry for Success’ – in Scotland
Measures, backed by an additional £63.5 million from the Scottish Budget 20032006, will help improve child health, learning, and tackle child poverty, including:
new nutrient standards for school meals; larger portions of more nutritious food at
no further cost to parents; fresh, chilled drinking water available free in school
dining rooms; improved facilities in dining halls ‘Hungry for Success’ can be
found at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/pages/news/2003/02/SEED191.aspx The

Welsh Food Alliance has been calling upon the Welsh Assembly Government to
do likewise over the past five years.

(3) Following the introduction of Compulsory Competitive Tendering over twenty
years ago, and the introduction of National Vocational Qualification employer
based training in the early 1990s, the provision of provision of college based
vocational education and training has been seriously curtailed. Increased
capacity will be required if we are to properly train and assess catering staff.

For further information and interviews contact Press Officer Hilda Smith (01633)
266781