Highland councillors question poor uptake of free school dinners
Healthy school meals are still a turn off for pupils, the council’s head of canteens has warned.
Norma Murray, facilities services manager, said it was "soul destroying" seeing pupils turning their noses up at the nutritional canteen lunches and then wandering off down the street for a poke of cheese and chips.
And catering staff were coming up against a brick wall, despite the best efforts to entice the pupils to dine in school.
She said: "We are so restricted. We are trying to nurture and feed them healthily for their whole well-being and we don’t have blue juice and crisps that are full of additives.
"We don’t have sweeties, or pokes of chips with gravy or cheese all over them and I think what’s soul destroying is that that food is all allowed back into the school. As a catering department I think we can only do so much."
The comments were made at a meeting this week of the council’s education, children and adult services committee.
Ms Murray was addressing concerns raised by councillors after figures revealed a free school meals scheme for P1-P3 pupils had got off to a disappointing start.
The Scottish Government incentive was desgined to tackle obesity.
More than £200,000 has been spent upgrading school kitchens and dining rooms and 53 additional posts were created to cope with the predicted higher numbers but the uptake has been lower than expected.
Officials thought up to 90 per cent of pupils would opt for the free lunch but in some schools nearly half of those eligible are shunning the freebie.
Members debated the problem at the committee in Inverness yesterday (Wednesday).
Linda Munro, Liberal Democrat member for North West and Central Sutherland, said it was astonishing to see that only around 68 per cent of pupils at Merkinch Primary - an Inverness school in one of the region’s poorest areas - were opting for the free meal.
She said: "I would like to know what lies beneath that figure."
Culloden and Ardersier Liberal Democrat councillor Kate Stephen said although meals were free for P1 - P3 pupils, if the parents had other children who were older it might be too much to fork out.
She said the cost of the school meal was "very reasonable" but it would be £40-£50 a month for one child, and significantly more for parents with two and three children who were in P4-P7. She believes it is unfair to make parents feel guilty for not opting for school dinners.
"There’s an awful lot of people who aren’t eligible for free school meals. They are in work but suffering from in-work poverty," she said.
"The choice is do they spend £40 or £50 a month on the school dinner they’re not sure their child will actually eat or do they make a packed lunch or find a way of getting them food they know they are going to eat and then they’ve got money to spend in other ways.
"I think it’s very dangerous to put pressure on famillies who are already under a lot of stress and to make them feel guilty about not putting their children to school dinners.
"If we are genuinely wanting to encourage so many new children to eat school dinners then it is a much bigger picture about affordability."
But Ms Munro believes pupils are spending more money in the take-aways and supermarkets down the street.
"It is soul destroying when you see them with whole apple pies that cost 99p or they come out of Farm Foods with multi-packs and they share them. I would love to know why they don’t come into the canteen."
