Proper nutrition is fundamental to learning and physical development; but how can school catering services balance feeding hungry stomachs, delivering quality meals, and meeting tight budgets?
Every school catering service needs to meet three main objectives – nutritional, social and financial. Correct nourishment feeds the brain and influences mental and physical health. We need good nutrition to help us think well and maintain a good emotional state. This is even more important for young people whose brains and bodies are growing and developing at a rapid pace. In these hard economic times, for some students the food they access through school will be the only consistent and healthy food they see.
Another important function of school meals is the facilitated social contact offered during mealtimes. This is a time for students to experience and practise the art of conversation and one on one personal interaction. But how to deliver these integral experiences to the strict budgets imposed upon SBMs? It is important to see catering contracts as an opportunity – when run well it can also generate a surplus which can be invested back into the school.
An important first step when assessing your current service is to understand which students are accessing the catering service on a regular basis. One area of influence which is within the domain of the SBL, is the communication with parents and children around whether or not the catering service is meeting their specific requirements. What percentage of students use it in a typical week? For those who never use it, what are the barriers and how might you address these? How do you communicate with and capture parent and student voice about your catering service, and how does this filter through into changes and developments around the service?
SBMs are encouraged to manage non-staffing contracts, checking that they are delivering to KPIs and value for money, not allowing contracts to expire and simply roll over on unfavourable terms. This requires careful forward planning – not always easy when time can be restricted by other jobs that need doing. Scheduled meetings with contractors to review data and plan accordingly can be integral to ensuring contracts deliver value and meet agreed targets.
Many catering contracts are heavily weighted to the benefit of the supplier of local authority catering services. Except for special and AP provision, it should be possible to make a catering contract financially attractive for the supplier and to generate some investment from a surplus generated by the service back into school. Reviewing your contract on a regular basis will help you distinguish what is working for your school, any additional opportunities for added benefits or revenue and whether the time has come to search for a better deal.
It can take time to select the correct catering partners. SBLs should look to find managed services that meet with their values. There are many catering companies that bring added value through add on services such as holiday and breakfast clubs and nutritional education, meeting social and nutritional objectives. Driving excellence is about seeing the catering service as a thread which runs through the school and supports the whole enterprise. With careful planning and negotiation, a well-managed catering contract can be a major boon to your school offering.
This is a reversioned edition of an article written for Education Executive by Andrew Blench, SBM consultant at School Business Partner Limited. You can read the full original article here: How to achieve excellence in catering | Edexec
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