Poor school dinners to f inally face crackdown

A MAJOR review of the food served in Scottish schools is to be carried out as dozens continue to miss nutrition targets.

Education Secretary John Swinney said experts from three quangos will ensure more children get their five a day and eat food that has been sourced as locally as possible.

Last week it emerged that Scottish schools spent £1.3million in the past year on chicken from Thailand and imported carrots from Belgium, mashed potatoes from France and raspberries from Serbia.

The Scottish Mail on Sunday can

‘What children eat at school matters’

also reveal that many of the school meals eaten daily by growing teenagers cost less than £1 to produce.

Freedom of Information responses show Argyll and Bute Council spends 81p per pupil, per meal, while Aberdeenshire Council spends 82p and Dumfries and Galloway 83p.

Some councils are spending less than before, including Midlothian where spending fell from £1.03 per meal in 2013-14 to 88p in 2015-16.

There was also a big disparity between different parts of the country, with some councils spending more than £1.30 per meal.

Dozens of schools have failed to meet nutrition standards when visited by inspectors.

Figures from Education Scotland show only 32 out of 46 schools passed nutrition tests, with 36 passing gen- eral food and drink standards. In the previous two years, 64 out of 103 passed on nutrition, while 75 passed on food and drink.

Scottish Food Commission chairman Shirley Spear said: ‘There are some inconsistencies across the country, as could be expected.

‘However, there has been a huge amount of work done towards improving school meals on many levels and the commission has seen examples of work where this is working very successfully.’

Mr Swinney said the review would be carried out jointly by Food Standards Scotland, NHS Health Scotland, and Education Scotland.

He added: ‘School food matters, in terms of what children eat and what they learn about. With 366,000 school meals served up in schools every day we must ensure nutritional standards are the best they can be.’