Up to now I haven't been a fan of Jamie Oliver, but his Channel 4 series, Jamie's School Dinners makes riveting television, mainly because of what it reveals about the dark underbelly of state funding of education.
There are, it seems, two reasons why existing school meals are nutritionally disastrous: most schoolkids will choose only processed, homogenised, E-numbered junk; and schools can only offer junk food because they have to work with a budget of -- wait for it! -- 37p per meal. At the end of the first episode Jamie was shown having a sombre conversation with the Head Teacher who explained that the (good, nutritious, appetising) food he had cooked cost over £1 per portion, and that the difference would have to be made up by reductions in staffing, books or other educational areas. What struck me was the way this figure of 37p seemed to be set in concrete. It was the Number Which Cannot Be Changed. But surely the obscene thing is this arbitrary figure. A meal for one of the new Naughton kittens costs more than that. How can a civilised society spend billions on a war in Iraq and expect schools to feed kids on 37p per portion?
