LACA has helped launched a submission to the School Food Plan team urging that school meal standards be retained and their scope widened to include academies and free schools.
National chair Anne Bull says: “We think we can help the School Food Plan team understand better the importance of standards.
“We know that the team is getting to grips with the school food puzzle and has visited ‘regulated’ schools where the kids fill their plates solely with Yorkshire puddings or roast potatoes.
“However, this example does not demonstrate a problem with regulation rather a problem with training or supervision or a lack of food education: other pieces of the school food puzzle.
“So that’s why we’ve called this submission ‘Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water’.”
The Save Our School Food Standards campaign was launched in February 2012. It calls for academies and free schools to be required to comply with the same mandatory standards for school food currently safeguarding the quality of food available in maintained schools.
The campaign represents a coalition of support for the standards led by the Jamie Oliver Foundation, LACA, the Children’s Food Campaign, Food for Life Partnership, and School Food Matters.
The campaign is supported within parliament by Early Day Motion 54, which was tabled by Zac Goldsmith MP. At the time of writing the Early Day Motion has cross party support from 112 members of parliament. The online call to action has mobilised 912 supporters who have emailed a total of 414 individual MPs.
Collectively this group represents 86 years of frontline experience in school food and children’s health issues. We understand the complexity of ‘getting it right’ and that standards are just one piece of the school food puzzle but we believe that mandatory minimum standards represent the foundations of any school food provision.
As a minimum, mandatory standards protect children from unhealthy food that will have an adverse effect on their ability to learn. At best, standards provide the catalyst for schools to be ambitious and embed excellence in school food and food education.