5
EDUCATION PANEL
Thursday, 14th July 2005 at 10.00 a.m.
COUNTY HALL, COMMITTEE ROOM B
THE SCHOOL MEALS SERVICE IN HERTFORDSHIRE
Report of the Director of Children, Schools and Families
Author:Ros Aird, Head of Hertfordshire Business Services
Telephone:01707 281710
Executive Member:Robert Gordon
- Purpose of the Report
To inform the Panel of the background to the school meals service in Hertfordshire, to describe the context within which it operates and to set out, with proposed timescales, the plans for future improvements.
- Background
The Hertfordshire school meals service, which has always had a reputation for high standards and service provision, has seen many changes over the past 15 years, which have been largely driven by legislation:- Compulsory Competitive Tendering(CCT), the devolution of budgetsandmandatory nutritional standards have all had a significant impact on the shape of the service. In addition to this, changing tastes and the aspirations of schools, children and their parents have affected the way in which the service is delivered.
During the extensive school building programme across Hertfordshire in the post war years the provision of a kitchen in every school was a central tenet of school meals policy and the commitment to provide a wholesome, healthy midday meal, cooked from fresh ingredients was unquestioned. Considerable amounts were invested in equipping kitchens and in training kitchen staff with an emphasis on healthy food and making it attractive to children. This however was an expensive service with high labour costs and, with the advent of CCT and the abolition of compulsory nutritional standards in the early 90’s, a new approach was required, the format of which was largely prescribed by legislation and thus the catering DSO - Shire Catering - was formed. Shire Catering was successful in winning and retaining the business on the two occasions that the service was tendered, but the need to remain competitive in the absence of any nutritional standards and with pressure on staffing costs there was aninevitable increase in the amount of pre prepared items served, an approach also reflected in the offering from all the commercial providers of this type of service. Moreoverit was increasingly in line with children’s experience at home where pre prepared foods were becoming the norm in many households.
Nonetheless both the client monitoring organisation and the professional staff within Shire Catering retained the ethos of the old school meals service and, as far as possible, upheld its core principles. Thus the use of additives continued to be strictly controlled;coated, shaped products were restricted, mechanically recovered meat and genetically modified foods wereproscribed and there was an ongoing effort to reduce fat, salt and sugar and to promote and encourage fruit, vegetables and fresh produce; but all this had to be managed within the ‘contract’ costs.
The abolition of CCT and the delegation of budgets to schools brought further challenges and had a particular impact on Shire’s ability to manage the service holistically. The budgets for equipment repairs and maintenance, contract management and free school meals were delegated to secondary schools in April 2001 and to primary schools in April 2002.
For secondary schools, with the critical mass to support a viable catering operation,this gave the opportunity to shape the service fully in line with the school’s needs. The choice open to them was to tender the service, to remain with Shire Catering or to run it ‘in house’. A breakdown of the current pattern of service provision is given at Appendix 1. For those secondary schools that chose to remain with Shire Catering individual business plans, based on the school’s specific requirements, were developed and agreed. In many cases this proved an exciting way to build a strong partnership with the school, working jointly to build a cost effective service which promoted healthy eating. In others heads chose to help balance the school budget from the potential profit available through the catering arrangements; by promoting the sale of the high profit, poor nutrition items on the basis that pupils are likely to buy them, whether on sale at school or not. It should also be noted that for a number of secondary schools who have chosen to run their own service or to appoint and manage private contractors,Hertfordshire Catering have no involvement in the way in which the arrangements are developed and monitored.
For primary schools on the other hand there was a general recognition that budgets of this nature are more economically managed as a whole and the vast majority of primary schools remain with existing arrangements under a “buyback” arrangement. However any school can leave the arrangement with one term’s notice, either to enter a contract with a private company or to go ‘in house’ which in one case at least meant the reduction of the service to the current basic statutory provision (a sandwich lunch for free school meal pupils). This potential fragmentation is a threat to the ongoing viability of the service, with many small, mainly village schools lacking critical mass but providing a greatly valued service.
In 2004 the management of the client and provider roles was consolidated and the school catering operation renamed Hertfordshire Catering (as a division within Hertfordshire Business Services) in line
with County Council’s new corporate identity. Following this, in October theSchools’ Forum agreed new governance arrangements that vested
the financial management of the function within Hertfordshire Business Services against agreed Performance Indicators(PI’s) monitored through CSF with an annual report on progress to Schools Forum. This was in place before Jamie Oliver’s series of programmes focussed attention on the school meals service, but there is no doubt that the work already under way within Hertfordshire Catering will now underpin the move to a healthier meals provision.
- Context
3.1Food and Nutrition
In 2001 mandatory nutritional standards were reintroduced after an absence of over 10 years and new,more stringent,nutrition based standards have just been announced and,as with the current regime, will be incorporated into a menu plan that is acceptable to pupils.
For primary schools the nutritional requirements are delivered through a county wide menu plan that is flexible enough to reflect the ethos and culture of the individual school, and has been nutritionally analysed to ensure that it complies with the standards and contains a balance of the nutrients required. There should always be vegetables, salad, fresh fruit and yoghurt available each day and where,at the school’s discretion,‘popular’ items such as burgers and fish fingers are included this is only after working with manufacturers to reduce the amount of fat and salt in the products. Menus are colour coded to encourage children to choose a balance of food groups, but the main problem – one from which Jamie Oliver was not immune – is the general reluctance on the part of children to make the healthy choice. Although Hertfordshire Catering is actively working to promote a change in eating choices this is not something that it can achieve in isolation.
The issues in secondary schools are much more complex as pupils can purchase individual items and it is difficult to influence their choice. Many pupils also have the ability to go off-site at lunchtime to spend their money. There is a balanced “meal of the day” on offer, which is a complete meal and is available to those with free meal entitlement as well as to paying customers. There are also “healthy choices” including salads, jacket potatoes, noodle and pasta dishes along with fresh fruit and yoghurt etc., as well as a number of ‘Healthy Schools’ initiatives under way which promote and encourage healthy eating by this age group.
Hertfordshire Catering operates to an established Food Policy (attached at Appendix 2), which will be reviewed in the light of the newly announced nutritional requirements
3.2Performance Monitoring
Quality monitoring is carried out by the area managers who work to set standards and check these by visiting kitchens on both a programmed and an unannounced basis. These checks include:
- Adherence to nutritional standards and food policy
- Presentation
- Availability of choice throughout the service period
- Customer opinion – several children are asked what they ate and how they enjoyed it
A second termly audit is made to cover good catering practice and legislative requirements for Food Safety and H&S. In this context it should be noted that Hertfordshire Catering is a trading organisation within the County Council and is required to cover the cost of the operation through income – it has no obligation to make profit and in the event of any surplus this is ploughed back into improving the service or the infrastructure.
3.3Financial Breakdown
For the current school year the average cost of a primary meal is £1.43 which can be broken down as follows:
Food£0.40
Cleaning Materials£0.02
Direct Labour£0.81
Overheads£0.20
The food element of this will be raised to £0.50 in the next school year and the large part of this,as well as the associated increase in direct labour costs from the increased preparation time required, is expected to be financed by government monies made available to the LEA and to schools. The shortfall is expected to be addressed from the 6-7% increase on the meal from September which Schools’ Forum have been asked to approve at their July meeting
Until the Jamie Oliver series take up in the primary sector stood at 47%, at which level the service was in a position to cover its running costs. Since the broadcast the number of meals taken has reduced by 7%, which is lower than the national trend at 10%, but if it continues will have a significant impact on cost recovery
3.4Infrastructure
One of the major problems facing the ongoing viability of the service is the legacy of the post war school building boom and the policy of a kitchen in every school. Whereas the concept fits well with the current government policy on school meals provision, the reality in Hertfordshire is of an aging infrastructure with a poor equipment profile for providing the type of meal that is now demanded. Added to this increasingly
stringent Health and Safety legislation is making some equipment uneconomic, e.g. steaming food is recognised as a healthy means of cooking but increasingly steamers are having to be removed from kitchens because the legislation on ventilation and ‘fail safe’ mechanisms make them prohibitively expensive. The state of the infrastructure is also having an affect on the ability to recruit particularly as equipment is often hard to clean and the majority of schools do not have a dishwasher with
such tasks as washing up being done in the traditional way. The budget for kitchen capital equipment which for this year is £577,000 is managed by a team within Hertfordshire Catering, but spread across over 500 schools this amount is only adequate to cover the highest priority replacements and prevent kitchen closures. The budgets for the maintenance of the fabric of the kitchen are delegated to schools and this in itself can cause difficulties where heads are called upon to allocate scarce funds for the upkeep of the kitchen fabric. As part of the announcement on the monies to be allocated to school meals the government appeared to be addressing the significant funding gap for kitchen equipment and maintenance, but at the time of writing the details are not clear. In the meantime however Hertfordshire Catering has a list of priority areas which are currently being tackled and any further money will help speed up this process; these include the replacement of deep fat fryers with suitable ovens, the re-introduction of potato peelers, the replacement of heated rinsing sinks with dishwashers, etc.
3.5Recruitment and Training
That the school meals service in Hertfordshire continues to flourish is largely due to the dedication and loyalty of over 1500 staff in schools across the county. However attracting and retaining staff is a major challenge; the days are gone when jobs in school kitchens were highly prized and there was a ready pool of skilled labour. The position now is of a significant skills gap and much competition for available labour, with supermarkets and others willing to fit in with the needs of working parents. The job is physically demanding, whilst calling for a range of skills including catering and management ability, as well as interpersonal and time management expertise. It is little wonder that the siren song of the supermarkets is irresistible for many of those in this job market.
- Plans for the Future
This then is the environment in which Hertfordshire Catering operates and, in developing the future workplan, has the following aims and objectives (a table indicating the timetable for the implementation is given at Appendix 3):
4.1Food and nutrition
A series of initiatives is planned or under way which are aimed at improving the meal, encouraging healthy eating and working with schools in helping to educate children in the principles of a healthy diet.
The first priority is to increase the value of the ‘food on the plate’ by 10p to £0.50 in September, this to be allocated as follows:
Improvement in the quality and variety of meat/fish or other protein items. / £0.03Increase fresh vegetables including potatoes.. / £0.02
Offer every child fruit juice or fruit as an extra at the end of every meal. / £0.05
In addition there will be more limited use of carefully chosen, shaped coated products and, where heads agree, reverting to a menu offering less choice, but composed of food prepared from basic ingredients on the premises. All menus can now be nutritionally analysed and this information will be available to schools on request.
In some secondary schools pricing policies have been introduced which mean that vegetable and salad items are available at no cost and in consultation with heads this is planned to be rolled out further over the coming year
There is some concerns too about the quality of packed lunches brought in by children from home and Hertfordshire Catering will be running pilots next term to determine the potential for them to sell healthy packed lunches for those parents (53%) not wanting their child to have the standard school meal.
There are a number of initiatives under way to encourage the consumption of healthy foods – a pilot scheme entitled theFood Smiles project drawing in 10 representative schools in the Hertford and St Albans areas is targeted at bringing locally produced foods to one distribution centre and from there directly to the school. In all cases this is a whole school approach with links into the educational possibilities of the project. At the end of the 6 month pilot a full value/cost analysis will be carried out to assess the success of the pilot, what changes are needed and whether it can be extended to other areas.
Another initiative entitled ‘Food for Fitness’ has been under way in partnership with Stevenage Leisure for the past 6 months. This enables secondary pupils at certain Stevenage schools to earn reward points from making a healthy choice in the school cash cafeteria which can be exchanged for various sporting activities at the leisure centre. It has proved very popular but there are now some funding issues to work through before the scheme can be extended and other reward systems with perhaps wider appeal can be developed.
Increasingly schools are keen to work with Hertfordshire Catering to educate children in achieving healthy lifestyles and examples include food safety training, taster sessions, hands on experience in the kitchen, participating in school assemblies etc. and work has been underway for some time to achieve healthy school awards.
4.2Food Purchasing
In all the publicity over the value of the ‘food on the plate’ there has been little reference to how well the food was purchased. Clearly 40p worth of food bought through good contract arrangements could be the equivalent of 45p or 50p if poorly procured. Hertfordshire Catering have always drawn from properly constructed consortia contracts and this process will be reinforced with contract renewals for both dry, chilled and frozen goods programmed over the next 18 months.
4.3 Equipment
Reference has already been made to the problems with kitchen equipment that affect many kitchens and the capital budget, plus any other money that is made available, will be used to address the priorities of replacing old, inefficient items with equipment that will support the healthy eating agenda, and is also versatile and energy efficient. There are also plans to replace traditional round plates over a period of3yrswith the compartmentalised ‘airline tray’ type plates, which can have a detrimental effect on the appeal of the meal,.
4.4 Staff Training and Recruitment
The drive to increasing the value of the food on the plate and to reduce the use of pre prepared foods will mean that extra hours will have to be worked by the kitchen staff and they will need more training. From the economies gained from the amalgamation of the client and provider last year, 2 skills trainers have been employed and it is the intention to increase this over the year as monies become available. Ironically the move towards longer hours should help recruitment as the reduction in the working day occasioned by the increased use of pre-prepared food itemshas meant that many potential employees were deterred by their inability to earn a reasonable wage from such a short working day.