Essex and Southend Healthy Schools Partnership

Schools Forum Agenda Item 9 Date: 7th July 2010

Essex and Southend Healthy Schools Partnership School Meals Support Group Meeting 10.00 Westlands Primary School, Chelmsford - Monday, 10th May 2010

Present: Lesley Bojko (Chair), Sue Hudson, Jason Walmsley, Gary Stokes, Pat Brown, Tim Hull, Valerie Lucking, John Hunter, Joyce Woodham

Apologies: Carol Partington, Chris French

Introductions: Elaine Brockis – Welcome to the new member of the School Meals team.

1. Minutes from the previous meeting

The Minutes from the previous meeting on 1st February 2010 were accepted as a true and accurate record.

2. Healthy Schools Update

In terms of National Healthy Schools Status, there are now over 80% of schools who have gained this. This varies from area to area but the team are confident that the figure will continue to rise and are hoping to achieve 85% by December 2010.

All schools must now revalidate within 3 years of gaining status. The pilot scheme for the enhancement model which was launched in September 2009 consists of 46 schools who are all meeting this week. The pilot has been useful in ironing out any issues, concerns or challenges raised.

The Annual Review has a purpose to confirm the basics of healthy schools status are still in place and is a tool to aid maintaining this status. Feedback on the Annual Review so far is that it is fairly straight forward and reinforces what has previously been achieved.

Schools need to select 2 areas of work, one that is a school priority and one that is a local priority. In primary schools NI55/56 relating to obesity are key areas that generally needs focus.

For each area of work or priority schools need to have three outcomes. The outcomes are split in to three categories:

 Quantitative – identifying a priority/outcome that can be measured  Perception – examples relating to children’s knowledge and understanding and how children feel  Targeted – a focus for particular groups

It can be challenging to identify the outcomes that are appropriate for each school and that can make a realistic change.

1 The challenges with the local and school priorities that are linked to the Essex Children and Young Peoples Plan have been the online tool. It has been agreed within the national team that changes need to be made to make this more user friendly and a more straight forward process.

Schools are working well and the team are supporting the process as best as possible. Due to the online process being so demanding, we are looking at ways to make changes to avoid it becoming seen as a chore. We are hoping enhancement will help and support school meals.

If any schools have difficulty online, registering with a personal email may be the solution. Any problems please call CSN or the healthy schools helpline for advice.

3. School Meals Audit 2010 update

The DCSF/School Food Trust carries out an annual audit in relation to NI52 take-up of school meals. This is a requirement for the Local Authority but not for schools and as a result last year only 60% of Essex schools returned a completed audit. The SFT understand the difficulties involved of data collection and so have simplified the audit this year. As an incentive to complete the audit, those that do complete it will be rewarded with a contribution towards the cost of ingredients (part of the strategy from 09/10).

The audit has now been circulated to all schools and a deadline was given of Friday 7 th May and the LA requested for it to be returned Monday 10 th May. Due to the data collection not being statutory for schools it has yet again been difficult getting forms to be returned.

Sue reported the levels of responses from schools in 2009 were 60% from primary schools and 72% from secondary. So far in 2010 responses have been less successful with 48% from primary schools again and 40% from secondary schools.

The audit has been sent electronically twice with the audit as an attachment in excel format, as some claimed they did not receive it due to the Essex emailing system filtering emails and causing problems. A reminder has also been previously sent and another sent today (May 10th) as a final reminder.

The SFT have extended the deadline to Tuesday 11th but this must be the cut off date as funding must be organised and the date to start collating all of the information must be set. It was discussed that it was thought schools would be keen to complete the audit as funding was available but the incentive of funding has not had the desired effect.

In the future information about the audit can be put on the website and the governor’s e- bulletin as it needs to be flagged to schools again and shown as beneficial. As Dr Nicholls pointed out to Jason last year it is important to be careful about the wording as it cannot be communicated as a statutory requirement for schools.

There is a concern as the audit will not be financially beneficial next year so there will be less incentive for schools to complete it. It is statutory for the LA to report NI52 information and is similar to the carbon reduction scheme. Schools may say they cannot complete the audit for many reasons.

It was discussed that this may not be the best time of year to ask schools to complete the audit as this is around the same time schools budgets are being prepared and a lot of financial work is taking place. It has been a struggle and will be more challenging when the funding ceases. No action to take was decided. 2 4. Conference 2010

Sue, Jason, Lesley and team are looking at February 2011 after half term to hold the conference. They also discussed holding it later in the year so allocated funding can be spent at the conference.

Jason has been looking into top venue options for the conference and costs for venues has been high, New Hall School may be an option as this was used last time, and the team will make an appointment to review the site and discuss availability.

Jason’s aim is to make this conference more interactive. The idea of awards such as Catering Manager of the Year award was suggested to get schools more involved and to celebrate achievement.

Jason has been researching a decent celebrity name to pull people in and came up with Jamie Oliver. Jason has already sent an email to enquire about booking him for the day.

Although the conference was successful last year there was very little press coverage, this time we will alert the press office early and ensure there is plenty of national coverage throughout the day.

Elaine was at the conference last year as an exhibitor and said that they were surprised at how cheap it was to hold a stall. Elaine thinks that the group could easily charge double for a stand this year. Jason added that it is hoped that the stand costs this year would be between £400 - £500.

There will be a number of exhibitors involved including national and well known ones. Jason is hoping to negotiate with them to arrange a discount for schools that place an order as a result of the conference.

5. Schools Forum

A large report from the DCSF has been received as there are a number of problems with funding for schools next year. Additional costs/burden could increase with the increase of FSM as a lot of schools subsidise catering. There will be a lot of negative results next year due to decisions that schools are going to have to make. Funding is affected due to a complex series of changes including to Essex County Council.

School Meals Support has been successful as schools find it difficult to work alone within budget and to meet the needs of the contractor. Input from the School Meals team has been proved to improve uptake and reduce costs. Catering contractors are also having difficulties and the number of schools operating provision has fallen year on year as a result. At present the School Meals team cannot help those schools who are working with contractors. Undoubtedly there is a need for support, from April 10, FMS no longer offer schools SLA’s for catering and have made their consultants redundant.

Due to the reluctance of parents to join FSM and those that are unsure of their eligibility, it can be assumed that the FSM figure is not entirely accurate. Parents must apply for FSM and at present those up to a £16k non working income are eligible. The LA are refining the system so that schools can check online which will help reduce paperwork. Parents must apply for FSM on an annual basis.

3 Tim asked what scope is there to revise the strategy. Things are moving centrally and Jason is in close contact with the standards and awards team regarding this. It was discussed how we could influence the Children’s Trust Board and our proposals.

Partnership/Projects board must send information to Terry Reynolds and Steven Castle and ask for a report ready for the next meeting in July. If School Meals can be more successful we support a turn around in provision deficits and reduce budget costs at school level. It is also important to make schools aware of the wider benefits of a good quality provision and not just to focus on cost, every child matters, be healthy, diet and exercise, educating children to make healthier choices etc.

6. Team Update

Elaine has now joined the team. She now has a CRB which took County too long to process. Elaine has been through a 4 week induction and is now starting to work with the schools. She is primarily working with the Chelmsford and Billericay areas.

Juliette Connell who covers the Tendring area is on maternity leave from the end of July. Due to the lack of money in the budget it will not be possible to replace her for this time. A way of supporting Tendring schools strategically during her period of leave needs to be worked out by Jason.

7. Project Updates

Gas – County are in dispute with contractors as they need paying however some of the work is still under dispute. Schools are becoming increasingly concerned regarding this and will prove to cause further problems throughout the kitchens. Jason suggested writing to the heads of the schools to invite views on what the next steps with this should be. All agreed the original idea of allocating funds with controls and guidance would have worked a lot better.

Two years ago £2.5million was funded by DCSF for allocated schools to have gas appliances fitted through a contracts team. There has been a 50% overspend, partly due to regulations changing which lead to modifications to the specification of the fans etc. In 2009 work was split in to three different teams of contractors. Currently the average school is costing around £32k opposed to the originally planned £26k resulting in £952,000 overspend.

8. Future of the group

The group discussed the question “will we exist without funding?”. The answer is unknown and the future of the group is currently uncertain.

Two consultations are to take place, these are the extension of eligibility for FSM for KS1 and KS2. The second is the continuation of school lunch grant funding, if this goes ahead this will be allocated direct to schools but at this stage it is unlikely that this will be ring fenced, the DCSF have indicated that each LA will have to put measures/controls in place – how this will occur is unclear.

Jason circulated the slightly altered funding strategy from 2008 – 2011.

9. Date and time of next meeting:

27th September 2010 – Westlands Primary School – 10.00am