School Food Catering Contract Management

Local research has also highlighted challenges that schools face when choosing and managing school food catering contracts. 

Free Support and Resources 

Please see below links to recorded School Food Catering Management Webinars and a handy catering management checklist :

Primary School Catering Webinar

Secondary School Catering Webinar

School Food Catering Management Checklist

 

In-depth catering case study

Barnet Public Health commissioned Health Education Partnership (HEP) in the 23-24 academic year to provide intensive catering support to a state secondary school in Barnet. The commissioned work was designed to be used as a catering support case study that would offer wider learning that can be applied across all Barnet secondary school food provision and gain insight into the specific challenges secondary schools experience in achieving the school food standards. A summary of the key findings are summarised below. For full details, please view the Catering Support Case Study Report. 

Key findings:

• There is only a small window of opportunity for schools using catering companies where changes to the ITT specification can be made. Once the contract is in place, the school is tied into using the catering company for many years, making any changes difficult to make. Timing to implement support is also challenging as there are many busy periods throughout the academic year where staff are busy and morale and energy levels suffer. For example, the beginning and end of school terms.

• Secondary school settings have an opportunity to take more of a whole school approach to school food.

• Schools need to be supported to fully understand the school food standards.

• Buy-in from key members of staff such as the catering manager, school governor, food technology teacher, business manager and catering staff are crucial in the ability to bring positive change.

• Innovative thinking is useful in improving pupil opportunity to make healthy eating choices and adopt a varied diet for e.g. 'ready meal/grab and go offers'.

• Similar to the findings of the School Food Audit (2023), the breakfast and mid-morning offer appear to be the least compliant with the school food standards.

• Meeting the school food criteria for the Healthy Schools London Bronze Award is particularly challenging for secondary schools and therefore should be considered a great achievement.