Jeanette is a former dinner lady of more than 20 years, co-founder of @SAfoodforlife and one of the UK’s most widely respected and inspirational experts on school food.

Jeanette, you approached Love British Food towards the end of last year and asked us to set up a working group of leading school chefs to encourage all schools to take part in British Food Fortnight.  Why?

Because we need to get the whole public sector catering industry to support British farmers and producers.  As a sector we buy £2.6bn of food every year.  It is a huge market for our farmers and producers.  We could secure the future of so many farms in these uncertain times if we set up robust supply chains between them and the public sector.  I have always felt strongly that we need our British farmers not just for food but for the countryside.   When we go for a walk in the countryside, we are enjoying what farmers and producers have  nurtured and this is hugely important to us all; we need to support them.

22 years ago when I started doing this very few schools were sourcing locally,  I was working in a relatively small (200) primary school in the heart of Nottinghamshire and we were getting different meats and vegetables from goodness knows where. I wanted the children to know where their food came from.  So I got in my car and drove to farms and asked them what they could produce for the school.  That is how it all started for me.

Now though, I fear for the future. I fear we are going backwards.  Food is getting more expensive.  We have 4.6 million children living in poverty.  These are children whose only meal of the day is a hot school lunch.  We need to provide a healthy, nutritious meal and as caterers we want to know where the food came from and how it was produced.

This is why I phoned you and said let’s work together and do something.  I have heard you speak.  I know your passion.  I know that you can make it happen.  You have that drive to get things done.  It is now a case of let’s get this done.  With the group we have formed we will get it over the line.

I always said when I co-founded Food for Life with Lizzie that the change required has to come from grassroots as well as from Government.  We work together with Government, of course, and we hope to meet in the middle.  There are many people out there who think they know about public sector catering but they have never worked in a kitchen, they do not know how to work in a kitchen, they do not understand the many constraints we are under.  We have got to get the staff on board, the caterers on board and, most importantly, children and head teachers on board.

School food has always been a political football.  When they introduced universal school meals, they thought “job done”.  Then Jamie Oliver comes along and again everyone thinks, job done.  It is not.  I remember saying to Jamie, this is going to take at least 10 years, and then after 10 years saying this is going to take another 10 years.  And now we are here.

There are many school caterers doing great work.  But we have a really fragmented service.  In the 80s, when compulsive competitive tendering came in, this allowed private contractors and all sorts of different organisations to take over school food.  Many of these were big companies.  They cherry picked the big schools where they would make money and they left all the other schools by the way side.  This is one of the big differences between England and Scotland.  Scotland is in the main still run by local authorities and because of this they can do a lot more with local suppliers than we can – and secondly they have the backing from Scottish Government who say ‘we think school food is important’.  In England our Government just throws money at it.  I remember in the 80s when local authorities, and I think Dorset was the first, said “we are not doing school food anymore”.  And from then on there was no investment in school kitchens for many years and many school kitchens closed.  These are just a few of the many issues the school meals service has to face.

What do you hope the Love British Food Schools Working Group will achieve?

I want to encourage every school in the UK to take part in British Food Fortnight (17 Sept – 2 Oct) by running a special menu.  Over a million children were involved in the national food celebrations in this way last year.  British Food Fortnight showcases what is possible.  We need to showcase what is achievable and showcase what we are doing now.  There is good work out there but we only see negativity in the media.

Eight of the top school chefs in the country have agreed to sit on this new group.  They are all leaders in their field doing tremendous things.  They are role models for others.  For example, what Tony Mulgrew is doing in Halifax schools is tremendous but at the moment no one hears about it.  I want this new working group to get the message out. 

This is exactly what Love British Food can achieve; spread the word via social media to as many people as possible, and that includes the children and students.  Explain exactly what we are trying to achieve on menus and why we are doing it.  Because of pandemic, now is the time because more and more people want to know where their food is coming from.

This was precisely the reason I founded Food for Life.  You have to make targets achievable. By inviting schools to take part in British Food Fortnight I believe we are giving them an achievable target.  The national food celebration is a useful catalyst in this respect.  Take part, see what can be achieved on a tight budget and then encourage schools to support British farmers not just for a fortnight but throughout the year.  So, as an activity, British Food Fortnight in schools is not a one-off.   A special two week menu is achievable for everyone and then we hope they will keep it going longer term and keep taking it one step further.

I want the group to inspire school chefs with tales of what their colleagues do.  A cook will look at what others do and think “if they can do it, can we? How can we make this happen?”

We need to get away from desk based decisions.

And we need to talk to the children too. It is all about conversation.

If a school chef says, “I want to do this but how do I start?” what do we tell them?

It depends on who they work for and where. 

For chefs like Tony Mulgrew in Halifax and Sam Ward in Devon, for example, you could say to them “Get in your car and speak to your local farm shop, speak to producers and ask them “Can you do this?”.  Some will say yes, some no.  I was able to take this approach because I was in-house.

If you are a Local Authority like Jayne Jones in Scotland and Judith Gregory in Wales or Jacqui Blake in Nottingham and Derek Wright in Blackpool [all members of the new Working Group], and you are looking after many schools it is a different proposition.  We need to understand from them how they do it.

And a private contractor will be different again which is why we have Linda Cregan from ISS.    For example, there is a fantastic programme in Lancashire at the moment that we can learn from.

The key thing to understand is that everybody does it differently.  The new group will provide lots of simple, clear advice online that school chefs can look at.  We will provide advice for different scenarios.  So a chef can go online and say, I am like Jeanette, how did she do it?  Or, I am like Derek, how does he do it?

For those who are working for big food service provider, I say “talk to your bosses”. You need to start the conversation and include all the staff in the discussion. 

Thinking of school head teachers, so many do not realise that when they get a contract with a provider, they as head teacher have a say.  If you do not agree with what is happening in your kitchen then you need to go back to the provider and say “I am not happy with this, what are you going to do?” 

We want to empower people and give them a voice.

The group represents the whole UK…are its goals achievable across all nations? 

Yes, we welcome everyone.

How do you see this group running?

We’re not going to talk, we are going to do it.  Keep it simple and get it sorted.  That is why we are calling it a ‘working group’!

How do we involve farmers and producers in our plans?

Farmers have found it difficult to break into the public sector.  Hopefully the new Government buying standards will make it easier.  And we will talk to them also using their social media platforms etc; 

Cornwall did a pilot with farmers a few years ago but it didn’t take off.  It will be interesting to see what the South West pilot achieves.

We need to involve suppliers like Levesleys, greengrocers who supply schools in South Yorkshire.  Local producers take their produce into the Levesleys depot and they then distribute it to schools on their behalf.  We need to find lots of Levesleys all around the country! Butchers too can fulfil the same role.  I had an invite to go and see that operation before the lockdown hopefully will be able to visit soon.