My reaction to the School Food Plan, by Carmel McConnell founder of Magic Breakfast and expert panel member. @MagicCarmel
The Summary.
It's great, John and Henry have done a cracking job. I haven't stopped smiling, honestly, because I believe we now can sort out school food systematically, improving the lives of thousands of children by offering them a better school breakfast and lunch.
But a bit more. From Tuesday 16th July, the day of the All Party Parliamentary Group on School Food at Westminster.
The All Party Parliamentary Group on July 16th was already pretty warm, with Westminster baking out a gentle 30 degrees outside. But (and this is a cheese warning, this blog is full of good feeling and some cliche!) it got even warmer as John and Henry talked through the School Food Plan. Warmer with relief and happiness that the review had been so clearly from the heart, so thorough, so child centred, so action oriented. Warmer still as many experienced school food experts expressed the view that the Plan is a game changer, a big step on in the evolution of good school food. And, as much as any of that, warmer because we couldn’t work out how to open the 100 year old windows.
So, the Plan. Well, first of all John and Henry deserve a nice big thank you from all of us, I think. They've (with their indomitable DfE team led by Matthew Purves) united a disparate body of school food expertise, because they are passionate, clever and clearly slightly mad. Nietzche I think said if there is a big enough why, we can get through any amount of how. They've worked on the basis that getting better school food into the nation's children is the foundation for their future success. Letting children eat the wrong food creates unhappy, unwell, underachieving children, and creates a pipeline of underachievement and illness. So there's a pretty big why. But it takes something special to create such a strong groundswell of support for the Plan. It's so much more than improved lunch take up - read it and you'll be amazed at the whole range of great stuff. Getting Government backing for the main actions is a huge achievement, and the Secretary of State also deserves our thanks, in my view, for making school food improvement a funding priority during a time of austerity. So thank you.
What's my role? Well I’ve been a member of the expert panel, done my fair share of head scratching, working through the vast amount of information that John and Henry welcomed into the review, from right across the education spectrum. All of us on the expert panel will stay on to help with the implementation, bringing our experience and individual areas of expertise. My area of expertise is that I'm an optimistic sort of activist, keen to offer a good breakfast to children who arrive at school too hungry to learn. , I'm the Founder of (www.magicbreakfast.com), which provides a healthy breakfast to 7,500 children each school day, in 230 schools. We build food skills and confidence, stressing the role of parents as well as helping the school reap the many rewards of good breakfast and lunch. It's really simple. Good food drives child attainment, happiness and wellbeing. And you may have seen this phrase a few times now - a hungry child cannot concentrate.
And now the Plan is launched, what is my reaction? Well, delighted. It is an important and radical set of actions, which I believe will upgrade the food experience of a whole generation of school children. Actually I haven’t stopped smiling. Not only because breakfast is in there, but really because Henry and John have created a cracking plan of action to tackle so many under resourced areas of school food. Now, I hope we can unleash the positive energy created by the plan into a million different school food improvements. As I've pointed out over the years, posters won't feed children, people will. You, possibly. I believe everyone can make a big difference to the success of this plan. Why not you?
Let us know how you are getting on and sending love, Carmel
