Standards saved; but not as we know them

The Save Our School Food Standards campaign, of which the Children's Food Campaign is a key member, sent this email to supporters in response to the publication of the School Food Plan

The School Food Plan was published a fortnight ago, giving fresh impetus to the push for good food in all schools.  While we welcome the plan, the key for us was how it measured up to the calls in our Save Our School Food Standards campaign. The School Food Plan makes a clear commitment to mandatory standards for school food. Our combined efforts – convincing 117 MPs to back our important child well-being campaign and ensuring standards were an ever-present item in the inboxes of the Plan’s authors Henry Dimbleby and John Vincent – have been vital in achieving this. However there are still some important battles to win. 

In your emails to the School Food Plan authors, and to your MP, you asked for:

• Mandatory food and nutritional standards, which apply to all schools.
• More help for schools to implement the standards.
• Robust monitoring of the standards.

What we’ve got from the School Food Plan – our successes:

1. Agreement that school food standards are a necessary safety net, and that the current ones have brought about a sea-change in provision.[i]
2. Recognition that school food standards need a nutritional framework to them.[ii]
3. Commitment to the principle that school food standards should be mandatory.[iii]
4. Support for the principle that school food standards should apply to all schools.[iv]
5. New money from the Department for Education (DfE) for schools to encourage more children to choose school meals.[v] Plus the establishment of a Small Schools Taskforce to give targeted support to such schools.
6. Ofsted inspectors will now be given guidance to consider how lunch time and the dining space contribute to good behaviour and the school’s culture in the dining hall. They will also ask head teachers about the way a school promotes a healthy lifestyle for their children.[vi]

What we’re still waiting for:

1. Clarity over what the new food-based standards for school lunches will look like, as these are still being developed by an expert panel.
2. A pledge to change the law to ensure current academies and free schools have to adopt the standards.[vii]  
3. Assurances about how schools not currently engaged in good food practices will be able to access and benefit from the seed funding, as the bidding guidance has not yet been drawn up.
4. Closer monitoring of food in schools, although the DfE will monitor – in an as yet undefined way – a representative sample of schools to check that they are meeting the standards.
5. The Department for Education agreeing to reintroduce the criteria measuring ‘the extent to which pupils adopt healthy lifestyles’ which was lost in the revised Ofsted Inspection Framework.

The campaign continues

Over the next few months new food standards – replacing the current food and nutrient standards, but which will have a nutritional framework – will be drawn up and tested.  We will work hard to ensure these new standards are as rigorous and nutritionally sound as possible. We will also be campaigning to ensure that the food served in all schools is properly monitored and that, in lieu of legislation, pressure is kept up on all academies and free schools to meet the standards. 

Finally, our attention will turn to the 2015 general election. We plan to lobby all the main political parties to commit to bringing in or maintaining appropriate legislation – a few lines in their next Education Bill – to ensure standards will be compulsory for all schools. 

As the School Food Plan enters its next phase, our respective organisations will be working alongside the Plan, championing the sustainable food agenda, and continuing to campaign to ensure the DfE fully implements its commitments. 

Thanks for your continued support.

The Save Our School Food Standards campaign

(Jamie Oliver Foundation, Food for Life Partnership, LACA, School Food Matters, Children's Food Campaig)n