Ah school meals, the battleground for hearts and minds (both children and parents). Jamie Oliver, Turkey Twizzlers, you know the drill.
While there seems genuine optimism about the fate of the primary school meals service, providers and politicians are waiting eagerly to see the findings of next month's LACA/SFT school meals survey.
Surely national uptake at secondary level will have risen, having bottomed out at its lowest point since just after the Second World War last year. Surely?
But how about this to garner envious glances from all? John Betts Primary School in London's Hammersmith - demonstrating a laudable whole school approach - opted out of Local Authority control last year for school meals.
This was well meaning, as the school wanted to deliver a made on site, fresh-food lunch service, but not at all straightforward as John Betts didn't even have a school kitchen. Bugger.
However, undeterred by this small detail school headmistress Gillian Del Bravo galvanized the governors and parents and put together a business case for a new facility. As part of this she also got the parents of the 200-plus children at the school to agree to take the new school meals.
With this commitment in place the kitchen was put in and caterer Bartlett Mitchell stepped in to run the service with uptake running at an incredible 100%. Jamie Oliver would indeed be proud.
Prue Leith, chairman of the SFT apparently was on a visit to the school last month.
Ian Mitchell, chairman of Bartlett Mitchell, said: "It's been a privilege to be part of this great collaboration between parents and school - a great case study for other schools!"
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