Dining hall
Another aspect of improving school dinners is making sure the dining hall is a comfortable and pleasant place to eat where pupils and staff can enjoy their meal in a friendly, social setting.
If the dining hall in your child's school is about to undergo refurbishment or be decorated it is important that the views of teachers, catering staff, pupils and parents are taken into account. This could be done via a school-wide survey or parental involvement in the School Nutrition Action Group (SNAG).
Although major refurbishment is not an option in many schools there are lots of simpler, cost-effective ways of improving dining halls in which parents can play a role, either by submitting ideas or giving practical help, such as painting, designing artwork or helping to build new furniture.
Organisation
Organisation during meal times is also important and schools should be taking steps to help ease some common dining hall problems including long queues, less choice for those at back of the queue, lack of time, not enough tables and limited pay points.
Ideas to help tackle some of these problems are:
- rotas for arrival times
- separate sittings
- more serving points
- extra tables
- more cash points
- pre-ordering of meals
- special counter for pre-ordered collection
- extra food or sandwich stall elsewhere in the school.
Schools should consult with parents over changes and improvements through parents' evenings, newsletters, surveys or the SNAG, and parents can ask the school for information.
Tackling stigma
Hungry for Success recognises that there is a perceived stigma attached to children receiving free school meals. Schools should be taking steps to help tackle this and have payment systems that ensure anonymity for those who receive free meals.
This can be done with swipe cards or smart cards that can be topped up with cash and used to buy meals. These systems are already operating in many places throughout Scotland, especially secondary schools.
Many primary schools already have cashless dining halls where pupils are issued with vouchers to exchange for meals. It is important that these voucher systems also ensure that free school meal recipients are not easily identified.
