Schools set to take on takeaways

5 January 2012

School caterers can now offer specially priced meal deals to targeted groups of students in an attempt to keep them out of local takeaways.

The announcement by children’s minister Sarah Teather is part of the government’s efforts to tackle child obesity. It also comes as the NHS releases its latest data on children’s measurements, including weight, that shows obesity on the rise.

Under new powers, schools can offer price promotions on meals to particular pupils, encouraging more children to try a healthy school lunch and increase take-up of school dinners.

Takeaway businesses often target school pupils by tempting them with cheap lunchtime deals. Schools and their caterers were unable to fight back because under government regulations they had to charge the same price for the same item for every pupil, unless they applied for special permission from the government.

“School meals beat takeaways hands down on the quality of food they serve, but up until now they have struggled to compete on price,“ said Teather.

“Getting children into the school canteen is vital – the benefits of healthy school meals are clear. These new powers are an important step in tackling childhood obesity and will mean schools can help hard-pressed families,” she said.

In practice, a caterer could offer £1 meals to pupils starting a new school. There could be special prices for brothers and sisters who regularly eat school lunches, which would in effect help families afford healthy food.

There could also be cut-price meals for a different year group each day to encourage them to choose healthy school meals regularly.

Previously, a school or local authority had to apply to the Secretary of State for a Power to Innovate exclusion to charge different prices.

A statement from the Department for Education noted that during a free meal offer in a Bolton primary school made under the Power to Innovate, take-up levels increased to record levels of 86 per cent for the targeted year group, more than a third higher than the average take-up in all year groups in Bolton primary schools. A subsequent £1 meal deal produced a 70 per cent take up, which was 21 per cent higher than the norm.

The government’s move comes as the latest National Child Measurement (NCM) figures from the NHS Information Centre show obesity rates among final-year primary school children are increasing.

For the school year 2010/11, 19 per cent of year six children measured were obese. This was up from 18.7 per cent the previous year, up from 17.5 per cent in 2006/7.

But the number of reception-year children who measured obese in 2010/11 dropped to just over 9 per cent. This was down from 9.8 per cent in 2009/10 and 9.9 per cent in 2006/07.

The NCM programme measures the height and weight of children in reception class (four to five-year-olds) and year-6 (10 to 11-year-olds) in primary schools in England.

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