New school food standards offer boost for both children's and planetary health

A major upgrade of School Food Standards in England has been confirmed by the Department for Education, to ensure school meals are in line with the Government's own latest guidance on child nutrition, especially around reducing children's intakes of free sugars and increasing fibre. 

In what the Government calls "the biggest overhaul of school food in a generation", the new standards aim to boost children's health by increasing portions of fresh fruit and vegetables, contain a stronger focus on high fibre and inclusion of healthier plant-based proteins including pulses and beans, alongside a reduction in sugary desserts and drinks, as well as fried foods.

Sustain, alongside many other partners working on children's health, had backed these changes and had also strongly pushed for schools to have more flexibility in shifting menus to include more plant-based options, including beans, pulses and plant-based alternatives to meat. 

Responding to the launch of the new standards, Children's Food Campaign Manager Barbara Crowther says: 

"These new standards reflect a major shift to healthier, more nutritionally balanced and climate-friendly school food, and represent a big boost for both pupil and planetary health. We're pleased to see the focus on fresh vegetables and fruit, more fibre, pulses and wholemeal bread, pasta and rice, as well as reduction of high fat, salt and sugary items. We hope schools and their caterers will now receive adequate funding, guidance and support to turn these changes into appetising new menus that children will be excited to try. 

"9 in 10 parents agree that schools have an important role to play in encouraging healthy eating habits. With an additional 500,000 children in families receiving Universal Credit becoming entitled to free school meals this year, the stakes are higher than ever in terms of ensuring meals are both healthy and appealing to children, encouraging everyone to take up this offer.

"In an ideal world, we would have liked the Government to be even more ambitious in aligning with health and climate-friendly diet guidance, given how urgent and important it is to reduce prevalence of childhood obesity and protect our planet for future generations. In particular, we believe meal deals should focus entirely on healthy meals and not include purchase of bottled drinks, sugary desserts have no place in schools at all, and we wanted to see even bolder action on limiting processed meat especially in secondary schools. Ultimately, we’re moving in the right direction, but there are still plenty of ways the government could build on this promising start, and go further to drive healthy and sustainable school food systems in the future.”

Read the new School Food Standards for England

Sustain's Children's Food Campaign worked hard to ensure parent voices were heard during the consultation, including commissioning polling, and providing easy templates for parents to reflect on what they want their children's schools to offer and to contribute. We're pleased to see that parents were the largest respondent group amongst the 5,216 responses to the consultation. We have also created a toolkit for parent-led action to improve school food.

Sustain's Children's Food Parent Ambassador Mandy Mazliah, who has three children aged 16, 15 and 11, says:

“I’m pleased to see the new school food standards now in place. As a mum of three, I know how important it is that children have access to nutritious, good quality food at school, and I’ve been shocked by how often options like doughnuts, sausage rolls and sugary or ultra-processed foods have featured. These new standards are an important step towards improving what children eat at school, with a stronger focus on vegetables, whole foods and healthier options. Now we need to make sure they are properly implemented and monitored, so every child can have the food they need to fuel their learning and support their health.”

Download our fantastic parent toolkit on school food

To increase fibre, and building on evidence and recommendations from Sustain's Real Bread Campaign and Children's Food Campaign during the public consultation, the revised standards have increased fibre in bread to at least 4g fibre per 100g, or be made with at least 50% wholemeal flour.

Real Bread Campaign Co-ordinator Chris Young says:

"We’re glad that the Government listened to us and raised the basic standard for fibre. It’s a good starting point and we hope that DfE will make it absolutely clear to schools that the standards are a minimum and that they can be more ambitious."

"We look forward to the Government stepping up to the plate by encouraging, and meaningfully supporting, schools to do even better and adopt our other proposals."

The Children's Food Campaign is also pleased to see progress in improving transparency and monitoring around the quality of school food. Schools will now be required to publish their school food policies and menus as well as have a named governor with responsibility for food. The Government has also committed to establishing a clear monitoring and accountability framework, working with the Food Standards Agency and other official bodies. 

School leaders have also backed a more rigorous monitoring of school food standards. The School Food Review, which Sustain's Children's Food Campaign co-leads alongside School Food Matters, Food Foundation, Bite Back and Chefs in Schools, has today published insights from over 1,400 school leaders surveyed by School Food Matters via Teacher Tapp. 

• More than two-thirds (68%) of school leaders say the standards would be more effective if compliance was independently checked.
• Nearly two-thirds (63%) would welcome external verification of compliance in their own school.
• Just 1% of school leaders reported already having a school food policy in place. However, more than half (54%) said they expect publishing one to be easy, suggesting there is significant scope to strengthen school food governance without creating substantial burden for schools.
• The majority (57%) of school leaders said a template school food policy would be useful, while 37% wanted examples of good policies and the same proportion wanted training for governors with responsibility for school food.

Myles Bremner, Senior Programme Manager at the School Food Review and former Director of the School Food Plan, says: 

“The introduction of the school food standards in 2015 was a landmark moment for children's health. Updating the standards to reflect the latest nutritional guidance is welcome and long overdue. However, standards alone do not improve children’s diets. 

We are encouraged to see the Government acting on its promise to integrate monitoring and compliance into plans for the revised standards. A robust framework will be essential to ensuring the standards are implemented consistently across the country and ending the postcode lottery in the quality of school food. The Government’s priority must be ensuring the updated standards deliver better food for every child in every school.” 

Sustain member responses to School Food Standards announcement

Anna Taylor, Executive Director, The Food Foundation, says:

“Today marks another massive step on the journey to improve children's health across the country. Good school food standards are critical to making that happen and the School Food Project is there to help schools train up their kitchen teams and work with pupils to improve menus. This all needs to be underpinned by a robust approach to monitoring and supporting schools to improve. 

“Over the coming year, in the run-up to enforcement in September 2027, parents and children can expect to start seeing real improvements.

“Every child deserves the best possible start in life - and that means school food that packs a nutritional punch while bringing genuine pleasure and wellbeing to every child's mealtime."

Stephanie Slater MBE, founder and Chief Executive of School Food Matters, says:

 "We're in schools every day and see the power of a nutritious school meal. We want to see delicious and nutritious meals in every school so today marks an important step towards equity in the school food system. New standards and a framework for monitoring the quality of the food on offer will bring about the change we want to see: great school food that supports every child to thrive, wherever they live."

Naomi Duncan, CEO, Chefs in Schools, says:

 “Today is a huge day for children and young people. For far too long, excellent school kitchens serving fresh, tasty food have been competing with those serving up cheap, nutritionally barren junk. Today the Government has drawn a line in the sand and committed to not just improving standards, but ensuring every single school kitchen is held to them. We warmly welcome this action. History shows us that introducing higher standards leads in the long term to increasing uptake, when schools and caterers work together.

"Now the onus is on those of us who feed children every day in school to make sure that becomes reality again. We've launched the School Food Project to support schools and caterers with implementation of these new ambitions, to protect and increase uptake and help to unleash the dynamism and creativity that we know exists in every school kitchen. We have a year to prepare and we shouldn't waste a minute of it.”

Katharine Jenner, Executive Director, Obesity Health Alliance said:

"This is a major and very welcome step towards giving every child the best start in life. With one in three children leaving primary school above a healthy weight, we cannot afford to ignore the important role that school food plays in shaping children’s diets and long-term health.

“Cutting back foods high in sugar, salt and saturated fat, while putting more fruit and vegetables on the menu, will help make the healthier choice the easier choice for millions of children.

“Good school food will play an important role in achieving the government's ambition to become a more preventative state.  The next step is making sure these standards are properly implemented and monitored, so that every child benefits, regardless of where they live or their family’s income."