July 2011 The report of the School Food Trust and LACA survey on the take-up of school meals 2010-2011 is now available.
The School Food Trust and the Local Authority Caterers’ Association have today published the report on the sixth annual survey of take up, together with the take up statistics (Statistical Release: take up of school lunches in England 2010-2011).
The Statistical release: Take up of school lunches in England 2010-2011 was published on 7 July 2011, and can be viewed here:
www.schoolfoodtrust.org.uk/documents/annualsurvey6/statisticalrelease
The main findings of this report include:
- All 152 local authorities (LAs) in England were approached for information regarding school catering services. Of these, 129 (85%) responded, providing information relating to both LA organized catering services (whether provided directly or contracted on behalf of schools by the LA) and non-LA catering services.
- The response rate and coverage are both sufficiently high to be confident that the findings presented in this report are representative of local authority organized school meal provision in England. The coverage nationally relating to take up of school lunches is 78% in the primary sector, down from 94% in 2009-2010, and 54% in the secondary sector, down from 80% in 2009-2010.
- LA catered or contracted provision accounted for 83%, 39% and 75% of primary, secondary and special school lunch provision, respectively. Percentages for non-LA catering provision were 17%, 61% and 25%, respectively.
- Take up of school lunches was 44.1% in primary schools and 37.6% in secondary schools. This represents an increase over 2009-2010 of 2.7 percentage points in the primary sector and 1.8 percentage points in the secondary sector. This equates to about 173,000 more pupils taking school lunch in 2010-2011.
Average school lunch prices were £1.88 in the LA catered primary sector and £1.98 in the LA catered secondary sector, an increase of 3% for primary and 2% for secondary on the preceding year. - In the primary sector, of the LAs who provided information, 75% of schools had a full production kitchen, 7% had facilities for regeneration or a mini-kitchen, 16% had hot food transported from another school or venue, and 1.6% had cold food only provision. In the secondary sector, 98% had a full production kitchen; less than 1% had cold food only provision.
- 98% of primary and 89% of secondary LA catered school lunch provision were reported to be compliant with the food-based standards for school lunches, 94% and 77% respectively with the nutrient-based standards. For non-LA provision, 93% of primary and 89% of secondary schools were thought to be compliant with or “working toward” the food-based standards; and 93% and 82%, respectively, for the nutrient-based.
† “Primary” refers to primary plus special, unless indicated otherwise.
