In the wake of Jamie Oliver’s 2005 campaign to improve school dinners, Bournemouth Council has initiated a further pilot project for hot meal provisions in one its primary schools.

A second hot meal trial has been launched at Malmesbury Park Primary School this week and involves the contractor Pabulum and its staff based at Portchester Boys Secondary School preparing and transporting freshly cooked hot meals for the neighbouring primary school.  The chef at Portchester Boys already has to produce an extra 95 meals a day to cater for children at Malmesbury Park Primary but as the trial continues and becomes more established all those involved are hoping to increase this number even further.

Some of the lunch time staff at Malmesbury Park Primary School will also be taking on new roles and have received additional training that will provide them with the new skills they need to be directly involved in the serving of hot food.

Michelle Compton told us “It is great to see another hot meal trial up and running in the borough particularly one that uses staff and facilities that are already available in our schools and provides neighbouring schools with the opportunity to work together. Pabulum run a successful service at Portchester Boys with a menu that meets the current nutritional standards for school food and its great that children at a neighbouring school can now benefit from this. If the trial is successful it will give the borough and its schools another option to consider when looking at the reintroduction of hot meals from Sept 2008”.

New hot meal provisions are being made across the borough as a result of a recent government initiative which states that, all local authorities should have plans in place so every child who wants a hot meal at school will have access to one by 2008.  The new Secretary of State for Education has also announced a series of new measures to improve the quality of school meals across the country, including the most recent one of a further 3 years government funding.