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HAMPSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL

Report for Information

1) Purpose of Report

1.1. This report sets out the current activity of Hampshire County Council Catering Services (HC3S) in promoting healthy eating and increasing school meal uptake in schools across Hampshire.

2) Background

2.1. Over the last few years improving the diets of children has been a high priority for many individuals and organisations. The rise in childhood obesity is a major concern and common thinking suggests that unless there is a significant change in dietary habits this could be the generation where parents outlive their children.

2.2. The Jamie Oliver school meals programme shown on Channel 4 in 2005 started a change in the Government's thinking on the role of school meals within the health promotion agenda. By this time HC3S had already taken significant steps in making school food healthier, but much larger changes were to come.

2.3. The Education (Nutritional Standards and Requirements for School Food) (England) Regulations 2007 requires lunches to contain specific essential nutrients representing a third of a child's daily requirements. This was effective from September 2007 in the case of primary schools and will be effective from September 2009 in the case of secondary schools. This legislation is designed to benefit children's health and wellbeing. Primary school meals in Hampshire complied with this nutrient standard from September 2007 and secondary schools will have nutrient compliant meal options by September 2009.

2.4. Ensuring that appropriate nutrients are contained in school lunches will contribute positively to the health and wellbeing of children.

3) School based initiatives

3.1. The emphasis on healthy eating in schools is significant but persuading children to actually eat and enjoy food served has proved difficult in many cases. HC3S has developed a number of initiatives to promote and encourage healthier eating and to improve meal take-up.

3.2. Encouraging parents to choose the school meal is tackled in various ways. At parents' evenings, particularly those for new pupils to the school, samples of school meals are prepared by the school kitchen, and parents and children are invited to sample and taste the meals. A stand offering further information is also generally on display.

3.3. To ensure that all parents are aware of what is available on the school lunch menu, every young person within a primary school is given the school lunch menu detailing the 3 week menu cycle and the dates against each week as appropriate. The printed menu is distributed twice a year as the menu changes in April and October. An example of a sample menu is attached for information.

3.4. The school lunch menu offers two choices of main course, one meat based and the other non meat, but sometimes children are disappointed if they cannot have their first choice. To maintain first choice options, ordering systems have been introduced which currently operate in 339 primary schools. The ordering system not only ensures children have their first choice but also helps keep food wastage to a minimum.

4) The school meal in Hampshire

4.1. Market research carried out with primary school parents in the winter of 2004/05 revealed that parents wanted to know what their children were actually putting on their plates for lunch, and felt that the lunch menu gave too many choices. As a result, September 2005 saw an early adoption of the new standards in Hampshire, and the introduction of a "whole plate policy" where children are served the whole meal including 2 portions of vegetables - usually one portion of cooked vegetables and one portion of salad. Many children complained in the early days, but there is a theory that a child has to try something 6 times before they may grow to like it. The consumption of vegetables and salad has certainly increased within schools and complaints from children and their parents have fallen off.

4.2. Appreciating that around two thirds of children in Hampshire's schools currently eat a packed lunch (rather than take a hot school meal), a picnic lunch has been developed. This allows for those parents who prefer their children to have a more snack type meal to obtain this at school, whilst still maintaining the nutrient requirements.

4.3. 2007/08 was designated as the Year of Food and Farming in schools and profiled the connection between school food and food production and growing. This gave school meals the opportunity to connect the school menu to local food.

4.4. Working closely with Hampshire Fare the school meal service has been able to include on its menu local foods such as beef from Petersfield, Hampshire pork, local fruit, vegetables and dairy products, and more recently Hampshire free range eggs. This information was disseminated to the parents of primary school children through the production of 92,000 DVDs called `Meal or No Meal' which was produced with the assistance of Lyburn Cheese, Hampshire Fare and the South East Food Group.

4.5. Working with a standard set by the Hyperactive Children's Support Group (HASCG) Hampshire school meals removed over 70 additives from the school menu that could possibly cause children behavioural or concentration difficulties in school, and as a consequence was awarded the Excellence in School Meals mark in 2005 and again in 2007. The standard has been audited annually by HACSG and Hampshire remains the only school meals service to hold this award.

5) Cook and Eat Programme

5.1. To encourage children to eat more healthily an after school programme called "Cook and Eat" has been developed which invites children and their parents/carers/grandparents, to learn to cook together with the aim of promoting well balanced eating. The course runs for 6 weeks as an after school club and covers basic cooking skills, food hygiene and shopping techniques, and creates dishes which will usually be found on the school meals menu.

5.2. The Cook and Eat course has been adopted by the Local Public Service Agreement (LPSA2) Childhood Obesity Group as a positive way of promoting good eating. This working group comprising district councils, a health authority and the County Council obtained financial support through the `Chances for Change' Big Lottery bid and has been able to secure funding for 96 schools to run Cook and Eat courses across Hampshire schools over the next 3 years, which will consist of 283 courses. To date around 60 courses have been run in the Hampshire schools with over 1200 children and parents attending. The Chances for Change programme has the potential to impact an additional 5700 children and parents.

5.3. The Cook and Eat programme is delivered by the school meals team with support from both the Primary Care Trust and the school and in most cases this includes the school's cook leading much of the programme.

6) Healthy Schools Standard

6.1. All schools are striving to achieve the enhanced Healthy School Standard by 2010, which demonstrates they have reached a required level in the areas of Healthy Eating, Physical Activity, Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE) and Emotional Health and Wellbeing. HC3S is represented on Hampshire County Council's Healthy School Strategy Group.

6.2. To help schools with the Healthy Eating criteria all of the school meals operations teams have appropriate presentations available to them to deliver talks to school audiences about healthy eating, the balanced plate, and food sources.

7) School Meal Take-up

7.1. School meal take up in Hampshire was around the 40% mark until the showing of the Jamie Oliver school meal programme which brought about a dramatic reduction in meal numbers, almost overnight. This, plus the intense focus on introducing only `healthy' food onto the school menu, nationally saw a very significant drop off in children eating school lunches. However, as the whole approach to eating more healthily seems to have been accepted more widely HC3S are seeing school meal numbers again improving year on year.

7.2. The figures for the spring term show that 2005 saw the start of the decline in numbers with the school meal programme being shown in the February of that term. 2006 was the lowest point and it can be seen that there is a year on year improvement.

Spring	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008
Average daily meals	39484	37942	30308	32858	33108
% pupils on roll	38.4	36.9	31.4	32.7	34.3

8) Promotional Activity

8.1. In addition to the school meals menu being made available for all primary school children as a take home leaflet, further information is given to parents of children starting school to help reassure them about the benefits of having a school lunch. This booklet also covers such information as free school meals, catering for special diets and local food.

8.2. To promote the school meal and the benefit of eating well in school, opportunities are taken to go into the community where possible. This year alone various events have taken place across the county including cookery demonstrations at Petersfield and Andover Farmers Markets, stands at the New Forest Show, Rowner Carnival, Lee-on-Solent activity day and a stand in the Swan Shopping Centre in Eastleigh.

8.3. Promotion of healthy school meals may also be found with regular adverts on Dream FM, Kestrel FM and Andover Sound designed to be heard in particular around the `school run' times.

8.4. HC3S also promotes the healthy eating and healthy lifestyle messages through its websites which detail information for parents, curriculum support for teachers and games and activities for children. These are in addition to the caterers website: www.hants.gov.uk/caterers, primary age group website: www.myschoollunch.co.uk and secondary student group website www.yougo4it.co.uk

9) Staff

9.1. To promote the healthy eating agenda in school catering it is important that school meals staff are equipped with the appropriate knowledge and skills.

9.2. Over 1400 catering staff have undertaken a Vocational Related Qualification Level 1 (VRQ) in Delivering an Enhanced School Meal Service, over the last 12 months. This has equipped staff with basic food preparation skills, knowledge on healthy eating, customer care and refreshed their knowledge of Food Hygiene, Health and Safely and Manual Handling.

9.3. The Level 2 Certificate in Nutrition and Health was undertaken by 300 Unit Supervisors, Unit Managers, and Operational Managers in 2006/07 with a further 60+ undertaking that course of study this year.

9.4. All Unit Supervisors are encouraged to undertake National Vocational Qualifications up to Level 2 in Food Preparation and Cooking. Five local colleges and HC3S own in-house NVQ centre provide support for all those staff interested to participate in this level of study and qualification.

10) Conclusion

HC3S uses a wide range of opportunities to promote healthy eating in schools particularly through school meals. Whilst meal numbers did drop significantly in the summer of 2005, there is a steady increase in the number of children participating in the school meals service.

To ensure the desired health outcomes envisaged by the Government, the ultimate aim of the service is to have as many children as possible participating in school meals.