New analysis has found a significant gap between government funding and the cost to already cash-strapped schools of providing a nutritious, sustainable lunch. By Nick Hughes.
Labour is still in the foothills of its mountainous quest to create the “healthiest and happiest generation of children ever” but there are signs the new government understands the social value to be gained by investing in school food. In her recent autumn Budget, the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, committed £30m in funding for the rollout of free breakfast clubs in thousands of primary schools across England, starting from the 2024/25 summer term.
Campaigners responded by applauding the investment in the health of young people, although some, like the Food Foundation, also pointed out that the £30m accounts for just 10% of the £315m funding promised for breakfast clubs in Labour’s election manifesto.
The decision to fund breakfast clubs has also served to highlight how a hot, nutritious, sustainable lunch remains out of reach for many children. Analysis published last month by the charity School Food Matters found that underfunding is compromising the quality of school meals and creating financial difficulties, especially for those schools already running budget deficits.
The consultancies Bremner & Co and Cohesion were commissioned to compare the government’s allocated school meal funding with the actual costs of serving nutritious and sustainable meals. Drawing on data provided by schools, caterers and other organisations working across the school food system, they found that current funding for free school meals of £2.53 per child – a rate that has to cover everything from sourcing of the ingredients to staffing and overheads – is 63p below what is needed to produce a healthy meal accredited to higher sustainability standards like the Soil Association’s Bronze Food for Life Served Here.
As a result, a funding gap has emerged that has forced many schools into buying in pre-prepared foods rather than serve fresh foods cooked from scratch. A survey conducted last year by LACA, which represents local authority caterers, found that 27% of caterers reported increasing their use of processed foods, while 19% reported that rising costs had affected their ability to meet all of the school food standards.
The School Food Matters report recommends the government plug the shortfall by increasing the per-meal funding rate to £3.16. But how realistic is this in the current economic climate? And is it possible for schools to serve good quality, sustainable food without breaking the bank?
‘Black hole’
In her Budget, Reeves made no further funds available for the provision of free school meals, despite calls from charities like the Food Foundation to extend the eligibility criteria to more low-income households. “We still have 900,000 children living in poverty in England who do not get a free hot meal at lunchtime. Those children should be a priority for a Labour government,” said Anna Taylor, executive director of the Food Foundation.
Speaking during a webinar to launch the School Food Matters report, Sharon Hodgson, a Labour MP and chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on School Food, noted how “the last decade has marked a decline in schools’ ability to provide nutritious options for their pupils”. Hodgson said the new government “is considering all the options going into this parliament on how we can improve children’s health”, but with the chancellor seeking to fill a claimed £40bn ‘black hole’ in the nation’s finances, the prospect of Treasury bean counters signing off a 25% increase to school meal funding, as called for in the School Food Matters report, feels optimistic.
Making ends meet
What is beyond dispute is that funding for school meals has not kept pace with the realities of the cost of food and the cost of labour. The report highlights how smaller schools, defined as primary schools serving below 150 covers and secondary schools below 750 covers, struggle to break even as they can’t benefit from the economies of scale in buying and preparing food available to larger schools.
Some of those interviewed as part of the School Food Matters research noted how head teachers would always find the budget needed to feed children, but the impact would be felt through underinvestment in other areas of school infrastructure and resources.
The need to make savings also risks impacting the quality and sustainability of meals served. Many interviewees stated that although they would like to ensure meals are both healthy and meet high environmental sustainability standards, this is hard to achieve within current budgets. Some caterers said while they themselves have made environmental sustainability a priority, this is not often stipulated by schools as a priority in tendering; or if it is, it isn’t actively monitored through contract management.
Certification schemes, such as the Soil Associations’ Food for Life Served Here, have sought to increase the standard of school food by creating a framework for serving healthy, sustainable meals, however some schools said they had either stopped accreditation altogether or had dropped a grade (for example, from silver to bronze) in order to manage costs.
Although secondary schools are generally more able to make ends meet than primary schools due to a greater number of serving occasions (break and lunch) and the ability to sell high-margin, single-purchase items like cookies, sausage rolls and pizza slices, the fact these profitable items tend to be high in fat, sugar and salt poses a risk to the nutritional quality of the overall food offer.
Rate rise
In recommending an increase in the per meal funding rate to £3.16, the School Food Matters report suggests that £1.16 is spent on food ingredients, including 5p allocated for meeting higher sustainability accreditation standards such as Bronze Food for Life Served Here. £1.66 would go towards employing an appropriately skilled staff team and 32p towards overheads. That leaves an additional 2p per meal for quality assurance, including monitoring and reporting against school food standards, that would help deliver a “continual cycle of school food improvement”.
In order for the uplift in the meal rate to have a material impact on children’s nutrition, School Food Matters also calls for a series of additional measures including ring-fencing of the school food budget and the introduction of mandatory government buying standards for school food alongside mandatory quality monitoring.
It calls too for the implementation of national auto-enrolment for free school meals to help build economies of scale (currently, the system requires parents to opt-in to free school meals should they be eligible). Schools with children in receipt of free school meals automatically become eligible for an additional ‘pupil premium’ grant, currently worth £1,455 per year for each primary-aged pupil, however if those entitled to free school meals are not claiming them then the pupil premium also goes unclaimed. Research published earlier this year by social policy software and analytics company, Policy in Practice, found that schools are missing out on more than £600m a year from this particular funding stream due to unclaimed free school meals.
Less meat
Some caterers interviewed for the School Food Matters report said they had identified opportunities for increased sustainability and cost savings through menu design, particularly by replacing meat with other protein sources and reducing food waste, notably plate waste. This echoes the findings from a Footprint Intelligence report published last year in association with school food caterer, Chartwells, which identified a growing appetite among school caterers to embrace more plant-based foods both for sustainability and cost reasons.
Elsewhere, well over 100 schools are now working with the Chefs in Schools charity, whose aim is to transform children’s relationship with food by changing menus, providing food education and upskilling kitchen teams. Some schools help keep costs down by growing their own fruit or vegetables or even rearing their own animals for meat.
Chefs in Schools co-founder Nicole Pisani told Footprint last year that sourcing seasonally can help manage the current cost pressures that are affecting schools, as can creative thinking about how costs can be kept manageable while maintaining quality. “When dairy was getting expensive we stopped using [it] in our cakes,” she said. “When energy prices started rising we started to do fridge cakes, rather than oven-baked cakes. You have to be agile with your food costs.”
Yet not all schools will have the means nor motivation to put good food at the heart of school life without more support from government. Many experts believe that proper funding holds the key to unlocking a range of social benefits at scale. “Good food for children is a policy that pays and pays and pays,” said Steve Chalk, founder of Oasis academies, at the School Food Matters report launch. “It saves money on health, on justice, on benefits, on social care. It just makes sense. It’s worth investing in.”
