In its past three issues Cost Sector Catering has followed the build-up to The School Food Summit by offering a say to all the parties involved – from children to heads, parents to kitchen staff and caterers themselves. On the following pages you can read about what happened on the day. Reports by David Foad and Clare Riley.

Early risers turning on their radios on March 25th might have noticed a fairly unrelenting theme running through the news bulletins and current affairs stories that day – school meals.

It was the same on television, with LACA chairman Neil Porter slipping comfortably onto the sofa in the GMTV studio to offer his thoughts; and if you had time you could find the topic being taken up on the BBC website and in the pages of many daily newspapers.

If LACA's plan was to put the school meals service at the centre of the nation's attention – then March 25th was the day it succeeded.

So what was all the fuss about? On the face of it the introduction of some highly technical nutrient specifications in September of this year is not exactly the sort of topic to get the pulses racing.

The new nutrient-based standards are simply the continuation of a policy of getting junk food off school menus and training the appetites of the nation's youngsters to more readily accept healthier food.

Everyone who remembers the feeling of national outrage that greeted Jamie Oliver's televised foray into the school kitchen will agree in principle on the need to improve the quality of school meals.

The Turkey Twizzler he so successfully held up to ridicule still stands as a motif for all that was wrong with school food at the time.

When it was combined with figures highlighting the alarming growth in childhood obesity and diseases related to it, there was a groundswell of opinion in favour of change and school meals was identified by the Government as the vehicle to drive it.

In the early stages more money was found for the school meals service and food-based standards were introduced, both moves that have been more or less unanimously accepted as a good thing.

But even while this positive action was taking place the warning lights were starting to flash in some places as older pupils, in particular, went off site at lunch time in search of the burger and chips they were now denied at school.

For secondary school catering operators these days, selling fewer meals is not simply a matter to be shrugged off with the consolation that the numbers may be replenished by next September's new intake.

With local authorities demanding that catering services at least break even and ideally make a profit, a drop in uptake threatens the very future of the service.

Now, of course, the heat is really being turned up as services juggle with computer software to produce the sort of nutrient analysis that the standards are happy with.

And they fear that the closer they get to complying with the nutrient demands, the farther their meals move from anything that might be acceptable to picky teenagers.

Not only are secondary school students proving fussier than younger pupils, but caterers now have to compete with food options beyond the school gates. How big is the threat from ‘fringe’ outlets? Clare Riley reports.

"Fringe shops for secondary school pupils are another source of food. Fringe shops for school caterers are competitors." This was the verdict from Dr Jack Winkler, director of Nutrition Policy at London Metropolitan University. He was talking about the results from the 2008 report entitled 'The School Fringe – What secondary school pupils buy and from the shops around their schools'.

The research team recorded purchases in 16 shops around two large comprehensives in London. Pupils were given a questionnaire regarding the sources of their food and 80% of respondents said they bought from shops outside the school gates at least once a week. Some pupils were found to be visiting fringe outlets 6.5 times a week – more than once a day.

Dr Winkler described why the findings of this report are so significant: "Many would say that school meals reflect excellent value for money but adolescents are extremely price sensitive and will often choose what costs the least. Fringe food is not just about snacks. It is now a major component in school children's diets. Fringe shops are now providing more calories to pupils than school canteens."

Many media reports often cite takeaways as the biggest lure for school pupils but Dr Winkler's research suggests that there is another threat for school caterers emerging outside the school gates. "One of our schools was surrounded by six takeaways and one supermarket but the supermarket had more visits by pupils than all the takeaways put together. Your major competitor is the supermarket and not the takeaway."

Dr Winkler concluded by saying that local authorities must be aware of their competition in the same way other businesses have to be conscious of their rivals: "School fringe is too important to ignore. It offers an escape for those pupils who for whatever reason do not want school meals. To be effective any reforms must deal with not only what happens inside schools but outside schools."

If fringe shops continue to attract students and the Nutrient Standards fail to whet pupils' appetites there could be a significant impact on staff and budgets. Christine Lewis from UNISON spoke to delegates urging them to fully utilise the highly skilled and professional kitchen managers that operate in school canteens. "People are under enormous pressure and there are more cost-cutting exercises aiming to get more for less. Kitchen managers are being made redundant and obviously work is cascading down to kitchen assistants."

Lewis drew on examples from UNISON's recently launched 'Voices from the School Kitchen' report. She said that the report will make for difficult reading, telling delegates to 'read it and weep' and describing the survey as 'short but not very sweet'.

She explained how 80% of respondents to the survey reported working unpaid hours – up to as much as 15 hours a week. The survey showed how most of these unpaid hours consisted of kitchen managers taking home paperwork and staying behind to clean.

"Cleaning is a big issue as time for cleaning appears to be in short supply. If you are serving food at a fast rate there are certain cleaning implications that need to be taken into account," she says. "Jobs are much more complex and will become more complex obviously in September but one thing that has become obvious is that there is no pay increase or salary review involved in this, which many people see as fitting."

Despite making it clear that UNISON's main priority is to support its members, Lewis said that the trade union does want to see the Nutrient Standards become a success. She suggested that to bring pupils back into school canteens, attention must be paid to those behind the scenes: "I have to say we really do support the Nutrient Standards and all of the school reforms but we genuinely believe the transformation of school meals would be severely hampered unless the workforce issues are addressed. We cannot push these issues to one side."

YOU ARE TALKING YOUR SERVICE DOWN

Before taking to the stage, Jeanette Orrey from the Soil Association was instructed to spark debate among delegates. In a fast-paced, impassioned and often heated speech Jeanette urged local authority caterers to lose their 'negative' attitudes, before they lose the school meals service altogether.

"The school meal service has been hurting since the eighties. It's been in the spotlight for the last five years and it's not long enough," said Orrey, insisting that school meal caterers need much more time to put right all the wrongs. The school meals policy advisor explained how unlike in the eighties one menu does not fit all local authorities and that tastes are now differing from school to school.

She touched on how schools need to tackle their meals service with a business approach putting customer relations first, marketing their products and branding them in a way that completely engages the end user. "It's about creating a place where students want to be. Not where we have dining room environments with water running down the walls, plaster coming off the ceilings and pupils sitting at tables that used to be classroom desks," said Orrey clearly becoming more incensed at the string of bad practice examples. "And please don't tell me that this doesn't happen because I have seen it myself."

She appealed to headteachers to become interested in improving school meals noting that 250 letters were sent out to heads inviting them to a conference with just one reply. But the big talking point that animated delegates was her view of caterers and their attitudes towards the Nutrient Standards. She told attendees that they need to embrace change and stop turning to negativity: "Let's not hide behind a can't do attitude. Nine years ago I was told you can't put local, fresh or organic food on the menu. Well, we have done, we are doing so and numbers are up.

"If we don't stop being negative we are going to lose the school meals service. It's as simple as that. There are so many good things happening out there and so many local authorities are working hard but at this moment in time you are talking your service down."

She drew heckles from the audience suggesting that if local authority caterers had been listened to by the appropriate people there would have been no need for debates such as the LACA Summit. Delegates added that their concerns were serious and realistic.

One delegate was particularly angered by Orrey's comments: "The School Food Trust is not listening and has not taken on any of our concerns when they were raised at last year's LACA Conference. LACA are a very positive organisation and all of us here today want to promote schools meals and make them better."

The task ahead seems to encompass many issues such as addressing the eating habits of children, what children eat outside of the school gates including at home and changing how society as a whole perceives the school meal service. A positive mental attitude will help this along but as the delegates made clear, it is by no means the sole solution.

Campaigns such as Change4Life aim to galvanise the nation to tackle obesity and its impact, and secure the health of future generations. Doesn’t that make school meals the ideal place to start? Clare Riley reports.

Obesity in the last 20 years has trebled. It is a well documented fact that 70% of girls and 55% of boys will be overweight or obese by 2050. Sandra Russell, immediate past chair of LACA believes that the people feeding these children are deeply committed to their cause and that it isn't too late to turn these worrying statistics around.

"I think we need to invest in the future to improve on today. We should always be looking forward. I don't think we have never not learnt from the past and I, like many of you, believe that through the deregulation of school meals and the cheapest is best scenario, we are now living the legacy of that generation," said Russell.

Caterers are now serving less than 50% of all students attending schools across the country and Russell told delegates that there is a will to move the school meals service forward but that it can't be done single handedly. She quoted Ed Balls who last year said that ministers were right to bring in the stringent Nutrient Standards but that if at any stage progress needs reviewing and evaluating those steps will be taken. She added that in her view the school meals programme has now reached that stage.

Assessing the various healthy eating schemes that have entered the public arena, Russell explained how school caterers are being overlooked when government departments compile reports that deal with the very nature of the school meals service.

"I was at a conference last year and there was a 20 minute seminar about healthy schools, how the scheme works and how it is helping. Do you know that school meals and school food were not mentioned once in that presentation. There was no representation about the part we play or how we can work together. That was a Department of Health (DoH) presentation," said Russell.

The 'Healthy Lives: Brighter Future' initiative was another example that she drew on to highlight the government's lack of consideration. In the 110-page document from the DoH and Department for Children, Schools and Families, not once were school caterers mentioned prompting Russell to ask delegates: "Can we not contribute to healthy lives and brighter futures?"

She added that the sheer volume of healthy eating initiatives is beginning to distract many caterers: "All of these schemes that are going on in the background are going some way to diluting our ability to focus on one element. We need to work together to work towards our common aim of improving the health of our children."

Heads of schools were a recurring theme during the LACA Summit with Russell adding weight to the argument that to make change happen head teachers must start to take an active interest in the impact of school meals, make the most of the resources available to them and above all forge relationships with caterers.

Many recommendations were put forward by Russell including adding food to the curriculum, improving dining areas and extending lunch breaks past 30 minutes: "We have to position the service so it is attractive and if we do this we will serve more pupils. What we can do is recognise the limitations that we encounter on a day to day basis. If we are really, really serious about each child needing 14 nutrients on a daily basis then the only way we can guarantee that is with a set, standard meal of the day."

All these recommendations and ideas can go some way to improving the school meals service and making it more appealing to its customers. But as schools continue to move forward and take a 'whole school approach', the general consensus seems to suggest that a similar tactic is needed from the government.