News • Children's Food Campaign
Sustain welcomes Government announcement to reform school food policy
The Government's Levelling Up White Paper commits to improve accountability of school food which Sustain and partners have long advocated for.
The commitments, which increase accountability for both food served in school as well as the wider education linked to food, follow months of campaigning from Sustain members and allies on the School Food Review working group. Together School Food Matters, BiteBack 2030 and The Food Foundation have pushed for change by focusing on accountability; a mechanism for schools to report on embedding a whole school approach to food, to ensure quality provision and drive take-up of school meals so no child misses out on good nutrition.
Sustain welcomes these announcements, with our Children's Food Campaign having previously coordinated drives to improve monitoring of school food standards. It will also be good news for the headteachers who signed the joint letter to Nadim Zahawi last week, calling for stronger mechanisms to ensure the quality and eligibility of school food.
However, the commitments to improve accountability cover just one of the five priority areas highlighted by the School Food Review Group. With the government's white paper response to Dimbleby's National Food Strategy on food expected soon, Sustain and the Children's Food Campaign will continue to work with the group to push for the other four to feature, including the extension of entitlement, removing barriers to uptake of school meals, simplifying funding, and improving procurement.
The Government makes the following four commitments in the Levelling Up paper:
- Schools will be encouraged to publish statements on the arrangements for their ‘whole school approach’ to school food. This will become mandatory when ‘schools can do this effectively’.
- The Department for Education (DfE) will be working with the Food Standards Agency (FSA) to pilot measures with local authorities to ensure greater compliance with the school food standards.
- Training and support, worth £200,000, will be provided for school governors on the role they should take to support a whole school approach to food.
- Funding of £5 million to support food teachers so that every child can leave school knowing how to cook six recipes.
Published Monday 7 February 2022
Children's Food Campaign: Better food and food teaching for children in schools, and protection of children from junk food marketing are the aims of Sustain's high-profile Children's Food Campaign. We also want clear food labelling that can be understood by everyone, including children.
