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Progress History |
Most recent news at the top, so for the full history, scroll from the bottom of the page.
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16th October 2007. Conference a huge success Merton Parents organisied a National parents conference in North London, which brought together people from all over the country to discuss the work that still needs to be done to improve school meals. Delegates including Ed Balls (Secretary of State), Prue Leith (School Food Trust) and Zac Goldsmith (PPC Richmond, currently campaigning to improve school meals) were hugely positive about the event. They were all also very complimentary about the work of Merton Parents. A number of people went away inspired to start similar campaigns to ours. 4th September 2007. New Contractor starts work The new catering contrator - Caterhouse - has started work today, providing meals for virtually all the primary schools and Special Schools in Merton. We wish them luck! Parents may be concerned that the meals are somewhat basic at the moment. We are assured this is a temporary measure while the staff are undergoing training. Towards the end of the year we should see some more ambitious menus. 20th April 2007. Jackie gives a speech at Downing Street! Jackie Schneider, Chair of Merton Parents, was at a Sheila McKechnie Award reception at 11 Downing Street on Wednesday. If you click here and then click on the video link you'll see a 2 minute clip of her speech. Look who's standing listening to her....
28th March 2007. AGM. Merton Parents marked the beginning of its 3rd year of campaigning with an AGM. There was a good turnout to hear the latest news of the campaign and our plans for targetting Secondary Schools. Representatives from Which were there to tell us of their campaign to stop junk food advertising to children. Some of the tactics used by many of the manufacturers were shocking. You can see more about this at www.which.co.uk/kidsfood
15th January 2007. Competition Launch. Merton Parents have launched a borough-wide competition to help improve The Dining Room Experience in our primary schools. You can see full details here. Please ask if your school is taking part. The launch was covered on the front page of the Wimbledon Post and in the Wimbledon Guardian. 8th January 2007. JOIN US! We're on a recruitment drive and have produced 14,000 leaflets about our campaign so far. The Council have kindly agreed to distribute them to our 43 Primary and 3 Special schools. A PDF of the leaflet (900k) is available by clicking here.
11th December 2006. Goodbye and thanks. Vivianne Buller who has been advising Merton on how to overhaul the school meal service, comes to the end of her contract this week. Merton Parents wish to extend their thanks for the huge contribution she has made.
9th November 2006. INCREASE in numbers eating school meals. Despite stories in the media suggesting the opposite trend nationally, the number of primary school children in Merton eating school meals in October 06 had increased by 15% compared to one year earlier. This is clearly due to the improvement in quality that Merton Parents fought for, and indicates that numbers could rise even further under the new 2007 contract (see below) when quality will be further improved. November 2006. 2007 Contract. Merton Parents are currently attending regular meetings with the Council to help finalise the new contract for caterers who will produce meals in Primary Schools and Special Schools from September 2007. The Council are currently advertising for expressions of interest. We will also be involved in the decision about who eventually gets the contract. Needless to say we are pushing for healthy, appetising, freshly prepared, good quality food. If you are a company that might be interested in tendering, please see details here.
October 2006.
Rutlish boys go to Westminster. 9th October 2006. Merton Parents featured on 'Teachers TV' A program about the School Food Trust is being broadcast on Teachers TV Channel, and there's a section about Merton Parents. For details of how to view the channel and for the various transmission times, please click here. 1st September 2006. No more Feed Me Better? Last year's Feed Me Better trial in 6 Merton schools ceased in July and all Primary Schools will now be using the same menu. Some of the Jamie Oliver dishes have found their way onto the new standard menu, which is probably the best one Initial have produced yet. Unfortunately, past experience has told us that what's printed on a menu can differ considerably from what is actually delivered locally. We watch with interest. Initial's contract with Merton ends in July 07, so it will be put out to tender in the next few months. If you know of a company that you feel could do better, please let us know. 1st September 2006. School Food Trust standards. The School Food Trust has issued guidelines for standards in food, which schools are required to adhere to from this month. See details on the SFT website here, and read our press release in response here. 19th May 2006. Monitoring forms. Many Head Teachers have complained to us that whenever they have reported problems with their meals, the complaint seems to fall of deaf ears. The contractor seems to have little obligation to ensure consistency or to put things right long term. Finally our call has been heard and the borough are piloting some 'official' monitoring forms in Primary Schools. These are quick to fill in and require a Head Teacher or senior member of staff to confirm that the food provided was as advertised and that there was enough to go round. Please speak to your head teacher and urge them to use the forms. 28th April 2006. Headteachers School Meal Development Day. Five members of the Merton Parents committee were part of an all day meeting hosted by Jan Martin (Merton Head of Education) and attended by the Headteachers of around 50% of the local Primary Schools. Presentations were given by Vivianne Buller (School Meal Consultant), Jackie Schneider (Merton Parents), Pawan Lall (PCT nutritionist) and Sian Rowland (Healthy School Co-ordinator). The meeting was extremely positive and productive and it was clear that there was a strong desire to be cooking better quality food on site, from fresh ingredients. Opinions about what schools wanted to see included in the next Catering contract (from Sept 2007) were sought. It was also agreed that regular monitoring of meals by the schools was an essential factor that shouldn't necessarily wait until 2007. 30th March 2006. Merton Parents AGM. The meeting had an excellent turnout of over 100 parents. Speakers included Katharine Quarmby, (journalist - author of the New Statesman article quoted below), Jenny Jones (Chair of London Food Unit set up by Ken Livingstone), Richard Watts from Sustain, (organisation supporting children's food bill) and Vivianne Buller (Merton School Meal Consultant). See an article in the local Guardian. 28th March 2006. Congratulations to Jackie Schneider who has just WON a Sheila McKechnie Award! The organisation invite applications from all sorts of emerging campaigners, who have to give a presentation to a panel from the Foundation. Last night, Jackie attended a prestigious award ceremony at the South Bank attended by the great and the good - from Terry Waite to Geoffrey Howe to Gordon Brown. Her category was "Consumer Action" for her work with Merton Parents and she won! She even managed to bend Gordon's ear about the topic! The win will enable Jackie to receive all sorts of training, support, mentoring and advice to help continue running the campaign. March 2006. School Meal Survey. You may recall the school meal survey filled in by Primary parents at the end of last year. We finally have a full copy of the results. You can view it as a webpage or download a pdf here. The top 5 issues raised were: more fresh fruit and veg; fresh food to be prepared at every school; provide menu for parents; bigger portions; parents are prepared to pay more for better quality ingredients. There were 1,479 forms returned. 3rd February 2006. We haven't gone away! The committee have been very busy working with the authority to make sure we get the changes that the kids deserve. Here is a summary of recent developments. 17th November 05. It looks like the Jamie Oliver menus may have had a stay of execution! Priory were indeed going to stop serving them, but are now going to continue in tandem with the interim menus. The Head of one of the other schools in the trial had heard from a reliable source that Initial were withdrawing them elsewhere too, but the deluge of messages sent by parents to the Council, obviously had some effect. According to Merton, the trials will continue at FIVE other schools, and reassuring commitments were reiterated by the Council Leader and by the Director for Parents Schools and Families. 15th November 05. Reports from 'reliable sources' told us that Feed me Better menus were to be withdrawn from all the pilot schools, following complaints from a handful of children that the food was too spicy. Merton Parents suspected this may be Initial or Merton trying to wriggle out of serving the better quality food, and urged parents to contact the Council to protest. 3rd October 05. From today all primary schools in Merton should be serving the slightly improved, interim menus. See a copy here. These should not be confused with the Feed Me Better menus which are being tried out in only 4 schools at this time. Other schools in the Borough will only be in a position to receive this excellent food when their kitchens have been given a long overdue upgrade. Please speak to your child's Head Teacher and Email Merton Council to ask when your school will be able to serve the Feed Me Better menus. 15th September 05. Four Primary schools in Merton will be trialling Jamie Oliver's "Feed Me Better" menus starting in the next couple of weeks. The schools - Gorringe Park, Priory, Bishop Gilpin and Wimbledon Park - were selected because their kitchens were suitably equipped. We need to keep the pressure on the Council to complete all necessary upgrading of kitchens so that other schools in the borough can use these menus too. Until then the rest will be using some slightly improved interim menus. 12th September 05. Some schools have been sent new plates and bowls to replace the old 'prison' style trays. Others should receive them in due course.
12th September 05. Clarification has been received from Initial regarding the meat being used in the interim menus. They say: "I would like to allay your concerns regarding the use of reformed meat in our roasts. We have been assured by our supplier that the meat used is formed as opposed to reformed. They have provided the following definition:
Formed
Reformed
12th September 05. Some schools have been sent new plates and bowls to replace the old 'prison' style trays. Others should receive them in due course. 9th September 05. The Head Teacher at Gorringe School, along with Jackie and Angus (Merton Parents) have received a letter from Initial Catering who are unhappy about the photos on the Gorringe website (link below). Read the letter here, along with Angus's reply to it. 8th September 05. Not a good start to term!
 Gorringe Park School in Mitcham are again publishing a daily photo of the meal provided by the catering contractor, Initial. See what's been on the menu today. The meals served on the first days back were as bad as anything featured on this website and in The Daily Mirror last May. This just isn't acceptable! 2nd September 2005. We attended another meeting of the Merton School Meals Planning Group on 25th August, where the interim menus for use in primary schools this term were discussed. The menus being used from 3rd October ( click here to view menus ) see a number of improvements over last years food, but there is still a lot more progress that needs to be made. Despite a slight increase in vegetables, the amount per child is still woefully inadequate. To take two examples, a child having the vegetarian pizza is currently allocated only 1/5 of a tomato! The tuna and sweetcorn pizza has 2.5g of frozen sweetcorn (to give you some idea, this amounts to approximately 10 pieces of sweetcorn per child!) We also want to see the removal of all reformed meat products from the menus. The other thing that remains to be seen is whether what is published on the printed menu is actually what is served. Will there be enough food to last the whole of a daily meal service? Further significant progress with the menus is hampered until the Council can identify where it will find the £431k it has agreed to spend on kitchen refurbishments. These were due to begin in September 2005 and be complete by July 2006. We need to pressurise the Council to ensure that work begins and improvements remain on schedule. Several million pounds will also need to be spent on building kitchens from scratch for some of the schools that are currently without. So, in summary:
Improvements so far
Still required
August 05. People who signed our petition earlier in the year have received a letter from Andrew Judge (Council Leader) thanking them, and setting out how the Council plans to improve school meals. We're delighted that Mr Judge is now supporting this issue. We look forward to see actions that support the words. See how things are going on the progress page.
8th August 2005. At the 3rd meeting of the Merton School Meals Planning Group, we continued the discussion about the proposed interim menus for next term. We fed back a number of concerns expressed by parents and asked a lot of your questions. Pawan Lall of the local Primary Care Trust also suggested several improvements. Initial will take these all on board and bring a response to the next meeting. We again talked about the written descriptions on the menus. We feel that these should acurately (and unambiguously) describe what is being served. Therefore, for instance, descriptions such as "Lamb Roast & Gravy" need an indication that the lamb is a piece of reformed lamb, not a slice from a lamb joint. We feel that this view is clearly supported by Trading Standards literature. The view of a 3rd party professional is being sought. Likewise, we feel the term "homemade" should only be used for dishes actually prepared on the premises, and not those prepared at the 'mother' kitchen and then transported. Initial made the point that they wish to differenciate from packet food. We need to find a better term that meets both needs. Finally, a major blow announced to the meeting was the news that although the Cabinet agreed the spend of £431k on school kitchens, these funds do not appear to be available! This means that the planned refurbishment of 23 kitchens over the next 12 months cannot start until (at least some of) the money has been found.
27th July 2005. Jackie and Angus attended the second meeting of the Merton School Meals Planning Group. This was chaired by Pawan Lall of the local Primary Care Trust. Other attendees included Stephen Black (Merton Contracts Manager), Shirley Keen (Initial Catering Production Manager), Rachael Foulds (Initial Catering Nutritionist) and Sian Rowland (Merton Healthy Schools Co-ordinator). Merton and Initial were particularly keen for us to approve some new interim menus that they hope to roll out from September. Many of the menu items require better equipped preparation areas and will rely on 23 school kitchens being upgraded over the next 12 months (with the agreed £431k of investment) Therefore, only 8 schools will be in a position to cook all of the dishes listed, in September. Others will be given alternative dishes (yet to be agreed) until their kitchens have been upgraded during the next 12 months. Our feeling was that although the menus are an improvement on last year, there is still a huge amount that needs to change. We were assured that the new menus are merely interim menus for next year and that once the kitchens have been upgraded, we can move forward with better quality food - possibly using some of the Jamie Oliver menus. There still seems to be some (cost based) resistance to the use of proper fresh meat in place of 'reformed' meat. We felt that until better meat was used, the printed menus should at least indicate that reformed meat is being used so that parents are properly informed. Rachel, the nutritionist said she believed that the "dirty dozen" additives listed in our Aims and Objectives were absent from the menus and would check for sure. Also, Initial's suppliers have 'guaranteed' that no meat is mechanically recovered (MRM) (BBC report on MRM). We will attend another meeting in mid-August.
19th July 2005. Merton Council Cabinet agreed to the allocation of £431k to improve 23 of the school kitchens in the borough, at their meeting on 18th July. Jackie and Chris from Merton Parents were warmly received at the meeting (receiving a round of applause!) and our Aims and Objectives went down very well. There is talk that the Council may formally adopt them at the next Cabinet meeting on 4th September.
7th July 2005. Representatives of Merton Parents met with members of the PCT (Primary Care Trust - formerly the Health Authority) as well as Initial Catering and Merton Council to discuss working together to improve school meals. Initial has proposed some new menus which include more fresh produce. These will be looked at in more detail and discussed further. Before most schools are in a position to produce healthier meals, 23 of their kitchens will require upgrading to allow for fresh food preparation. This is a huge task and is reliant on the Merton Council Cabinet agreeing to a spend of over £450k in the next 12 months. The Cabinet meet on 18th July... They are likely to have several other demands for funds elsewhere, so please let them know that you'd like them prioritise the school kitchen upgrades. You could contact them individually or if you click here a blank email will open up addressed to all 10 members of the cabinet. If the go ahead is given, work would hopefully begin in some schools in September 2005 with the final kitchens being upgraded by September 2006.
7th July 2005. Further to the incident at Hillcross Primary School (see 17th June below) Stephen Black (Merton Contracts manager) apologised fully for the incident, and has been to the school in person to do so. He has pledged to take the complaints seriously and has set up another meeting with school staff and Initial to resolve the matter, rather than sweep it under the carpet.
5th July 2005. The principles (as agreed with Council Leader Andrew Judge) upon which the Council is working to improve school food, are as follows: 1. Our support for Jamie's Oliver's publicity in raising the profile of schools meals. We would also wish to support the long term aims espoused by Jeanette Orrey in terms of freshness and quality of food served. 2. Our belief that balanced food is vital to children and that as part of our work to fulfil the 5 outcomes of Every Child Matters we are seeking to improve the quality of food. 3. That we wish to work with the Parents' campaign group and also with our contractors, to secure improvement, and that we have evidence of doing that in, for example, the rise in the amount of fresh food now available, but that we are not complacent and know that there are many more improvements to be made in Merton and across the country. 4. That we will work with the contractors to ensure that staff are well trained and supported and that both cooking quality and quality of presentation are emphasised. 5. That we will give continue to give the resources we have available to managing contracts and will follow up on all complaints - and that we would welcome feedback on progress on improvement. 6. That we will bring to Cabinet in July a draft improvement strategy that explains the costs and implications of moving to plates for all chidlren, developing more schools with kitchens so less food 'travels', how we can work with schools on agreed protocols to ensure that the lunchtime experience is part of the overall education experience, and the issues surrounding raising the overall cost of a meal and how that would affect all groups?
17th June 2005. Hillcross Primary School received a visit this week from Karen Wilkes, one of Merton's contract monitors. She was informed that one parent was unhappy about the lack of choice available while another had recently complained that her child had only been offered pasta and broccolli because the main course (fish) had run out. The school commented that the last sitting ALWAYS has insufficient main course available. Ms. Wilkes told Hillcross that they were the only school to complain and that other schools "feel that the dinners are very good." It seems that the Borough are still trying to play us off against each other by claiming that any complaints are isolated. The school also requested additional meals to allow for chidren who had forgotten their packed lunches or had accidently dropped their food. Ms. Wilkes responded that they didn't need extra dinners as it wasn't cost effective and midday supervisors should prevent any child from dropping their dinner, knocking their drinks over or any other of the incidents that occur during the course of the lunch hour. This is unnecessary penny pinching. Surely there needs to be some flexibilty in the system that allows for accidents. Food running out is something we have repeatedly had reported by many schools in the Borough, and is simply unacceptable.
27th May 2005. Update from The Priory. The school has had meals cooked on site for the last three weeks. Our chef and her assistants have been working flat out to prepare dinners from scratch. Their reward has been to see the number of children eating school dinners almost double within the first fortnight. With the support of the Head, parents have been able to come in every day to see (and taste) the improvements for themselves. Now it will be important to build on this early success. In the past three weeks there has been a lot of contact between parents, the Head and the caterers. They have been responsive to our feedback and menu suggestions. We hope to be able to carry on working like this together to further improve the children´s school meals.
23rd May 2005. Merton Parents meeting with the Council. Several members of our steering group met with the council (including Leader Andrew Judge and Director of Education, Sue Evans) on Friday 20th May. See some notes from the meeting here. You can also see the joint press release agreed by Merton Council and the steering group.
12th May 2005 (Claire Davies) Parents and children at The Priory in Wimbledon are delighted at the improvement in its school dinners following the introduction of a new pilot scheme. The scheme, in which raw ingredients delivered to the school by Initial are cooked from scratch on the premises, was trialled on 5 May. The food served that day (sausages with yorkshire puddings, gravy, freshly cooked carrots and mashed potatoes, with chocolate pudding and chocolate sauce) went down so well that the new system was introduced properly on 9 May. In the first week, take-up of school dinners increased by nearly a third, with a further increase expected in the second week. Dishes served have included freshly cooked shepherd´s pie, pasta with fresh tomato and basil sauce, and real homemade pizza. Desserts have included fresh fruit salad and homemade cookies and custard. An added touch is the disappearance of the dreaded moulded trays. Even the smallest children have remarked excitedly that they are eating off "real plates"! Well done to the chef and her assistants at The Priory: they are a great example of how it could be done elsewhere in the borough.
Early May 2005 Reports from several schools say that meals have suddenly improved. Although the food is still poor quality, portion sizes are better and more vegetables seem to be available. A good start - but we want to see further improvements.
29th April 2005 Around 100 parents and children protest outside Merton Civic Centre, demanding better school dinners. See pictures here.
14th April 2005 At least 120 parents and governors from many Merton Schools respond to a leaflet and show up for a meeting held at Poplar School to discuss the appalling state of Merton School dinners. The meeting resolves to form a committee and begin a campaign.
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