Schools: Well-being and Personal and Social Needs

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Thursday 14th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port]

My Lords, when drawn at No. 15 out of 15, you never know what is going to be left—perhaps items from the rich man’s table—but I will do my best.

I thought dark thoughts when the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, spoke about food and took my pitch from me. However, I hope that she will think that what I have to say complements what she said so strongly and well. I pay tribute to my noble friend Lady Jones of Whitchurch for pulling this debate out of the bag, especially given her background of the School Food Trust. I hope that I am entitled to add to what has already been said.

I was led to the subject of food because today I must be ultra organised in that I must go straight from the Chamber to a governors’ meeting at the Central Foundation School, where I have served in that capacity for a very long time. The May newsletter that we shall be looking at at the governors’ meeting concentrates on food, and therefore my subject was chosen for me. I was delighted to see that the newsletter states that detailed discussions between the school’s catering company, Alliance in Partnership, the school council and Islington Council have led to an improvement in the nutritional value of the school’s food, but that it has also smartened up the canteen so that it is a more agreeable environment within which to eat food. All of us know that when we choose a restaurant we want to go to a nice place with ambience as well as gastronomie.

The sort of menu that you now find in the school canteen in the basement of a Victorian building looks as though it might rival the Rivington Grill or L’Abat Jour—my favourite restaurants in my area. On offer are lamb meatballs in tomato sauce, Mediterranean vegetables with couscous, beef curry, vegetable balti, mango chicken baguette or wrap; for side dishes, country mixed vegetables, pasta, braised rice or side salad; and, for dessert, a fruit bag, home-based dessert selection or rhubarb crunch with custard. The mouth waters.

The great thing about this is that it is not simply what is on offer when you go with your tray to the cafeteria; everything is integrated in a more generic approach to food, and that runs through the whole school curriculum. We offer food technology classes throughout years 7 to 9 in which students learn how to prepare healthy meals from scratch. Food technology has proved so popular that we also offer an after-school cooking club.

As though that were not enough, the school has tried out a student-run restaurant called The Globe. Hospitality diploma pupils were given another opportunity to wine and dine guests in their very own food establishment, this time named Central Cuisine. From luxury student-run restaurants to French food tasting, the Central Foundation offers a whole host of ways to keep students excited about healthy eating. Along with a variety of extracurricular sports activities and classes, there is something for everybody. And as though all that were not enough, who needs to write speeches when they are written so brilliantly for you in this way? Top tips—there are seven of them—on page three of the menu reads:

“Drink plenty of water. Take iron. Eat breakfast. Include protein-rich foods. Optimise Omega 3s. Boost energy. Destress with salad”.

It is all absolutely fantastic.

Far from this being an esoteric and rather marginal thing to talk about, we should be making more of good and healthy eating as the basis for a child’s sense of well-being at school so that they are well disposed to receive what happens in the classroom and have the strength to undertake what happens on the sports field afterwards. I should have said that I was talking about the Central Foundation Boys’ School. Therefore, even better, all these things challenge gender stereotyping as well.

Although she is not in her place now, I want to pick up on the intervention of my noble friend Lady King regarding whether the freed, autonomous and freestanding academies are under the same sort of pressure to give the same prominence to food in their general delivery or whether, as she suggested, up to a third have given it very low importance. I ask the Minister to give me some kind of satisfaction on that point but not to take too long on it as I have to get to the school governors’ meeting presently.

As a child in far-away Wales in a poor home where I did not eat any meat until I was 16, it was in 20th-century school canteens that I was fed all my protein through school meals. There was very tough meat. It was not called lamb then; it was called mutton and it was not very nice but, goodness me, it seems to have given me enough strength to stand up in your Lordships’ House and to go on at noble Lords in this way.

In conclusion, from that menu, for me it would be the beef curry with braised rice, and I think I will choose the rhubarb crunch with custard, although that may be slightly counterproductive.