One of my earliest memories of school is lunchtime. I remember standing in a queue and gazing up at a serious-looking lady behind a very large steel cooking pot. It is not even a proper memory, more of a sensory snapshot: overly varnished tables, room-temperature milk, the sound of cutlery clattering at every table, the smell of beef gravy.
Dinnertime - as many of us still call it - is the one constant of the school day. Playtimes may bite the dust owing to a heavy downpour, and assemblies are canned if the gym hall roof leaks, but school dinners always happen, no matter what.
They are rubbed into our memories over time like wax relief, pressed into our subconscious over weeks, months and years of repetition and routine. And this inevitability means that the school lunch period can offer so much more than just the sum of its parts. As the singular immovable object in the school day, what happens in the dinner hall can have far-reaching implications that stretch way beyond what’s on the menu.
Education researchers have long identified school lunch as fertile soil for study. Considering the social, political and economic factors that influence school food - and the subsequent impact on teaching and learning - it provides a rich seam for academic research.
As schools seek to comply with coronavirus regulations and renew their efforts to put wellbeing front and centre in both culture and curriculum, perhaps we would do well to explore what Marcus Weaver-Hightower describes in a 2011 article, “Why education researchers should take school food seriously”, as the “most human, embodied part of the school day”.
In simple terms, how does the school lunch experience have an impact on wellbeing? To examine this properly, we need to start at the very beginning and pull up a chair alongside our tiniest diners.
The advent of a significant planned increase in early learning and childcare hours in Scotland - which, despite a big Covid-shaped bump in the road, is still going ahead as planned this year in some areas, with others due to follow later - has meant that, for the first time, local authority nurseries have really had to grapple with how to offer lunch to three- and four-year-olds.
Snack time has long been a staple of the nursery day but extending this to a full lunch is something quite different.
In turning to their private and voluntary cousins for inspiration, local authority nurseries might reasonably expect to deal with a mixed (shopping) bag of fresh, homecooked food, packed lunches and, yes, possibly the odd tin of spaghetti hoops. Perhaps in response to this diversity of approach, Education Scotland makes a meal of lunchtime in its latest national practice guidance document for early-years education, published this year. Realising the Ambition positions lunch as “a unique opportunity to get to know children better”.
Calling for early-years practitioners to use mealtimes to strengthen relationships, resolve conflicts and ignite a love of learning, it makes clear that lunchtime is about much more than just what’s on the plate. Positioning the early-years lunch experience as a prime time for building wellbeing is an idea broadly endorsed by nations beyond Scotland’s borders, too.
So, if fostering wellbeing through the mealtime experience is fundamental within early-years pedagogy, what happens when children head to school? Does this focus on the wider benefits of positive lunchtimes remain or is it swept off the table completely? One key consideration is the length of time devoted to break and lunch in schools and how this has changed through the decades.
A study over time by the Nuffield Foundation provides some interesting food for thought. The BaSiS (Breaktime and Social Life in Schools) study involved a national survey of state-funded and independent primary and secondary schools in England. The study collected information on the main features of break and lunchtimes and also involved a survey of pupils’ views and experience of the social aspects of these daily events.
Sampling data over time, namely during 1995, 2006 and then again in 2017 - and publishing in 2019 - the survey offered some startling findings, particularly in relation to lunch break duration. On average, there had been a reduction in the length of breaktimes since 2006 and a really marked decline since 1995. Since 1995, breaktimes had been reduced by an average of 45 minutes per week for the youngest children in school (at key stage 1, which is the early part of primary school in England and Wales) and by 65 minutes per week for students in secondary school (at KS3 and KS4, which encompass most of the secondary years of school).
These reductions are caused by the cutting out of afternoon breaks and, increasingly, the shortening of the lunch break.
The study shows that the main reasons given by schools for the reduction in breaktimes were to create more time for teaching and learning, specifically to cover the curriculum and to manage or to limit perceived poor behaviour of students that school staff say occurs during lunchtimes.
Reducing the length of lunchtimes, however, also proportionately reduces the options for ensuring that the lunch experience is meaningful and positive. With less time on offer, it is increasingly likely that, instead of providing some much-needed respite from the hurly-burly of the school day, lunch will be a rush. And, with many mouths to feed and schools reluctant to use staffing budgets to employ lunchtime supervisors who focus solely on the task at hand, senior leadership teams increasingly find themselves donning their aprons and running the dinner hall, along with everything else they have to do.
As anyone who has ever waited too long for dinner will tell you, a rushed meal affords no pleasure. Nobody is suggesting that school dinner should be an à la carte dining experience, but nor should it be a speedy drive-through, with children bolting down their meal without any human interaction.
Yet, the Scottish government’s position - as set out in its 2014 document on school food, Better Eating, Better Learning - is that dining in school should “create an experience that encourages positive social interaction in an environment that children and young people choose to use, enjoy and look forward to”.
A lofty ambition, but what does it amount to in practice? For senior leaders in primary schools, often strong-armed into wiping tables and organising dinner tokens simply because there is no one else to do it, lunch duty can provide an unexpected opportunity to take the temperature of the school.
Creating a lunch routine that is ordered and unhurried allows for that key focus on wellbeing to resurface, even when time is short. Where else can leaders gain a snapshot of a particular child, class or year group? A chance to notice who is eating well, who is eating alone, those who are reluctant to leave or desperate to dash back to the playground? Sidling up to a child in the dinner hall can open up conversations that don’t happen anywhere else in school, with the lunch table providing a middle ground between classroom and office, a chance to provide support or challenge in a less formal setting or, of course, to subtly slide some seconds quietly across the table without any fuss.
Schools have always known the importance of a full belly for effective learning and school dinners are, clearly, key to this. Ensuring vulnerable children have access to a hot meal and nutritious food has never been of greater importance, given the uncertain times we are living through. The Scottish government’s recent pledge of more than £10 million to fund free school meals during school holidays, announced in October, is likely to be that rarest of things: a point on which both policymakers and school leaders wholeheartedly agree.
As schools battle to comply with coronavirus regulations, one of the areas of school life hit hardest has been the lunchtime routine. Large groups of children and queues that snake down the corridor are no longer an option, so schools have had to think creatively to put food on the table safely.
The idea widely adopted by local authorities has been the “grab and go” solution. Similar to a packed lunch, children collect their lunch and eat outside or in another space in the school in order to minimise large gatherings. For some schools, dinnertimes have become a marathon rather than a sprint, with staggered breaks meaning lunchtime seems to go on all day.
It remains to be seen what the impact of these changes will be, but it seems certain to me that the schools that come out of this the best will be those that have prioritised relationships and sought to ensure that lunchtime is still a chance for children to relax, connect and regroup.
Are busy dinner halls off the menu for good? Who knows? But as long as schools keep managing to serve up support and nurture along with the mince and tatties, the future for school meals will be bright. Ensuring that lunchtime is a human experience - and not just a chance to fill bellies - should remain resolutely at the top of the agenda.
Susan Ward is depute headteacher at Kingsland Primary School in Peebles, in the Scottish Borders
This article originally appeared in the 27 November 2020 issue under the headline “Fill mouths, feed minds”
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