2005

Monday 3 October 2005

“A range of cost-effective nutritionally balanced meals are provided to all customers including those entitled to free school meals.
“The SELB’s Catering Service has been trying to introduce a number of healthy initiatives in school canteens and these are likely to be most successful when they are supported by the schools and the parents.
“The intention has always been to reduce the amount of saturated fat, sugar and salt in children’s diets and, therefore, more recently salt has been removed from dining tables in most schools. Through whole school support, children are encouraged to adopt a healthier attitude, however, if a pupil requests salt he or she will receive it.
“The Catering Service has also looked at school dinner menus and has tried to introduce more healthy choices in place of what are considered less healthy options. These initiatives have been welcomed by many parents.
“As well as these Board-wide initiatives, 23 schools (including one with a split site) which were part of a pilot scheme designed to examine methods of implementing new Nutritional Standards For School Meals are to continue in the scheme. A further 11 schools in the SELB area became part of the scheme at the start of this school year and it is anticipated that up to 60 more schools in the Board area will join the initiative before the end of March 2006. This will require additional funding from Government as the project is rolled out. It is anticipated that Nutritional Standards will be introduced in all schools on a phased basis over the next three years.
The SELB will be writing to schools soon regarding the programme for Nutritional Standards.
“The SELB – like the other Boards – is planning to appoint a Nutritional Standards Project Co-ordinator who will have responsibility for delivering the planning, implementation and monitoring of nutritional standards.
“While the Catering Service tries to promote healthy eating generally within all schools this has to be balanced with customer demands. Due to the fact that catering is presently a non subsidised service, and therefore pressurised into being a cost effective business, Educational Catering has to be mindful of providing what the customer wants to buy or it won’t survive.
“Hopefully the good healthy eating initiatives and projects going on in the community and within schools at the moment will help to educate the customer to make the right choices at meal service points. Parents can support the efforts in schools by encouraging their children to eat healthily at home. Healthy alternatives are available in schools and it is encouraging when there is even a slight increase in demand for these choices.”
Catering staff provide the best possible service to their customers within the limited resources available to them. The Government subsidy on school meals was withdrawn by the Department of Education in April 2000. Since then, the price charged to paying pupils has had to be increased progressively to try to cover the full cost of producing those meals. The Catering Service must provide a cost-effective service and needs to maintain numbers of paying pupils.