Spotlight on services

By Louise Shearer

Imagine how efficient it would be if the menus for school pupils right across Shetland were standardised? Neil Beattie is relatively new to the Council (he joined as Team Leader – Catering and Cleaning in December 2018) and in that time has been working on a number of changes and improvements, including introducing a ‘standardised school meal menu’. I was keen to find out more.

Neil – can you tell me a bit more about the new changes to the school menu and what’s brought it about?

At the moment all schools have their own menus, which are set according to the Scottish Government’s ‘Better Eating, Better Learning’ guidance. It’s all about ensuring that we’re providing healthy and nutritious meals, drinks and snacks so there’s information on portion size, how many servings of oily fish per week and so on.

I attended a recent ‘Food for Life’ conference where we heard that school meal uptake in high schools in Scotland is on average 30% (and in Shetland we achieve 41%). Uptake in primary schools in Scotland is around 65 to 75% and in Shetland it’s 74%.

Employing 95 people across 27 schoolsWe have 27 schools operating 27 different menus. The nutritional analysis of all of those takes time. It took our three-strong team four weeks to analyse a monthly menu cycle. We have to check the ingredients from the wholesaler in terms of nutritional information and allergens, make recipes into a menu, create menus for a week and then double-check these to make sure they’re balanced. That’s a lot of resource when you multiply it out across all our schools.

We also only offer one choice at the moment, which can be a problem. We operate a Parent Pay system where parents or guardians are paying up front per term. If there are dishes some weeks that the child doesn’t like, parents might have to end up paying for a packed lunch as well.

So, now we’re planning one menu that all schools will use.

Who’s been involved in this project?

Marlene Hunter, the catering supervisor, with support from Susie Smith, have been helping me, as well as cooks from the participating schools.

We put a call out to all schools earlier this year and seven volunteered for a pilot. The head cooks from those schools met with us on an In Service Day in August (just before the new terms started) to review the new menu and suggest any changes.

The seven schools are Bells Brae, Scalloway, Brae, Sandwick, Cunningsburgh, Mid Yell and Whiteness. We’ll also keep communicating with the other schools so they’re in the loop as we roll the menu out further.

What did the cooks think of the menu? Did they suggest any changes?

They made some small changes and, since then, they’ve carried out some trial days using the new recipes. Overall, it’s gone down really well in the pilot schools.

Head Cook at Scalloway Primary School, Cathy Mann, said: “All the staff in the kitchen are very excited about the changes taking place. We think the children will love the fact that they’ll have more choice.”

Are you doing any other consultation before the launch?

We’ve spoken to the head teachers of all seven schools and we’ve also attended a number of parent councils to explain what’s happening. It’s all been really positive and people have a good appreciation of why we’re making these changes.

What are the benefits of the standardised menu?

Most importantly, a standardised menu will make it easier for all schools to follow the nutritional guidelines. Less time will be spent at individual schools on analysis because we’ve done all of that up front. That means catering teams, and head cooks in particular, can be more focused on delivering the service to the school pupils.

There will be slight variances depending on, for example, fish deliveries into a particular area of Shetland, as schools get their fresh fish on different days. But, other than that, it will be all the same.

Won’t a standardised menu mean less choice?

Quite the opposite. We’re going to have three menu options available each day, and it’s a four-week menu. Some of the smaller schools – under 50 pupils – will get two choices.

What benefits will this new menu bring?

School dinners provide a third of the nutrientsThe time we’ve spent analysing menus up till now isn’t sustainable if we’re going to be efficient, effective and offer the best service we can. It’s also been quite time consuming to make sure each school is meeting the guidelines, with 27 different menus to scrutinise.

With the introduction of Parent Pay and the realisation that only offering one option can lead to double-paying, we think this will be alleviated by offering more choice.

So what happens next?

The first step is to get the menu up and running in the pilot schools and then after Christmas we’ll roll it out to another seven schools. The remaining schools will be introduced after Easter next year.

And after that?

We’re going to aim for the ‘Food for Life’ Scotland accreditation.

Neil shares the Food for Life Scotland information leaflet with me, which states that it “supports local authorities to serve freshly prepared, locally sourced, sustainable school meals in their schools and early years settings.”

We’re already almost there on the ‘Bronze’ checklist, which covers a number of factors relating to food quality, food leadership and culture, education, and community and partnerships.

For example, we need to demonstrate that at least 75% of dishes on the menu are freshly prepared (on site or at a local hub kitchen) from unprocessed ingredients and when we checked our menus at least 92% of our dishes are.

What difference will getting the accreditation make?

Getting the accreditation for our school meals means we’ll be showing that we’re going over and above what’s required at a nutritional level. We want to have the best quality meals we can within the budget available, as well as trying to use more local produce.

(Neil also highlights in the leaflet that there are already 12 out of 32 local authorities participating in the scheme and also points to East Ayrshire Council who have scored ‘Gold’ for the last ten years.)

How do you apply?

We’re planning to apply in November once we get the new standardised menu up and running. It is a thorough process, which will take us about nine months to work through, but it will be worth it.

When all schools are using the same menu, we’ll know what’s being bought and we’re hoping to make savings through a shopping list each week. This should make us much more efficient in terms of procurement, and suppliers will all receive copies of the menus in advance.

Local produce will be key to this and we’re keen to use local suppliers much more, even if they can only supply a few schools. As part of this, I’m going to be looking at ways to make it easier for smaller suppliers to do business with the Council.

Apart from the education and financial benefit, the ‘Food for Life’ accreditation will also bring economic development benefits to the local economy and that’s a key motivator.

Further down the line, I’d love to see children involved in what they want to see on their school menu – so that’s food for thought!