Local authorities are facing resistance in their campaign to make pupils eat at school, writes Andrew Denholm

The food may be healthier and canteens have been given a stylish makeover with widescreen televisions and pop music, but Scottish secondary pupils still aren't eating school dinners.

As chips, burgers and pizzas have been sent packing from dining halls across the country, there has been a corresponding lunchtime pilgrimage to nearby take-aways and burger vans.

But on Friday, Glasgow City Council's executive committee will consider radical action to address the problem. The authority is likely to approve a pilot project among eight of its secondaries which would see first-year pupils banned from leaving the school grounds during lunchtime from next August.

Under the scheme, which affects St Thomas Aquinas, St Paul's High, Castlemilk High, Govan High, Whitehill Secondary, St Mungo's Academy, All Saints Secondary, and Lochend Community High, pupils will be required to either bring their own lunch or buy food from the canteen. In some cases, pupils will be allowed to go home for lunch.

If the pilot is a success, it could be rolled out to S1 pupils in all Glasgow's secondary schools and could even be extended to other year groups.

The scheme has a number of objectives, the first and most important of which is to help tackle Scotland's fixation with junk food, with one in five boys and more than one in seven girls aged two to 15 years old now classed as obese.

Over the past few years, schools across Scotland have improved the nutritional standards of their school meals in line with Scottish Government targets and, in primary, where children cannot leave school, the take-up of the new menus has been widespread.

However, there has been mounting frustration in secondaries, with research showing that almost half of pupils leave the school grounds at lunchtime - many to use local food outlets and vans which do not have to comply with nutritional standards.

There may be many reasons for this - including peer pressure and the expression of freedom - but officials believe the result is that healthy eating messages are not being picked up.

Gordon Matheson, the council's executive member for education, said: "There is little point in offering healthy lunches if thousands of our pupils leave school to buy chips from the local takeaways."

The council believes the move will have a positive impact on the safety of children and could decrease bullying, which often takes place outside school grounds. It may also benefit local communities with a reduction in disruption and littering.

Initial reaction to the scheme has been mixed, with some experts calling for the ban to be extended across Scotland, while others have warned that secondary school pupils should be allowed to make choices for themselves as part of the process of growing up.

While the move may be seen as draconian, it is not an unusual concept for private school pupils. State school pupils in Scotland have always been allowed out at lunchtime, but many independent schools have restricted the freedom of their charges.

This has traditionally had much to do with safety and security, particularly in cities where the blazer of a private school can act as something of a red rag to those from neighbouring schools. One beneficial consequence is that it provides a captive audience for healthy school dinners.

A spokesman for Glasgow Academy said only sixth-formers were allowed out at lunchtime and this had a positive impact on the uptake of school dinners. A spokesman for the High School of Glasgow added: "Pupils are not allowed off-campus during the school day and, because there are no dispensing machines and we have an excellent caterer, it makes implementing the policy of healthy eating much easier."

Yesterday, Professor Mike Lean, chairman of human nutrition at Glasgow University, said the initiative would have a positive impact on pupils' health and should be extended across Scotland.

"The average first-year secondary pupil is not ready to make informed choices about the food they eat and what is best for them in nutritional terms," he said. "They have to start recognising these things, but keeping them in at lunchtime in S1 will help schools educate children about food. Some burger vans and take aways are exploiting the youngest children and a measure of protection by this curfew is a positive step which other councils should consider adopting."

But Judith Gillespie, policy development officer for the Scottish Parent Teacher Council, Disagreed. "As youngsters move into secondary they have to take control of their lives and deciding what they eat is part of that process," she said..

"The important thing about healthy eating is that young people choose to do it themselves and I think it is wrong to say that just because someone leaves the school grounds at lunchtime means they are eating unhealthily. Putting pupils in a controlled environment where they cannot make their own choices could be counterproductive in the long-run."

As part of Glasgow's new measures, officials will also look at cracking down on the operation of food vans close to schools.

Burger and ice-cream vans have already been removed from "exclusion zones" around secondary schools in Renfrewshire, while Inverclyde Council, West Dunbartonshire and East Renfrewshire have imposed trading restrictions.

The report to the meeting says: "The licensing and regulatory committee plans to bring forward options around restricting the trading of burger vans near schools."

If Glasgow gets its way, they will soon have had their chips.

'It's all about our right to choose'
By MARIANNE TAYLOR

At 12.15pm on a cold, crisp day in Glasgow, the burger van outside St Thomas Aquinas Secondary is quiet.

But seconds after the school bell rings at 12.30pm, a stampede of children run down the hill to the van. Within minutes, a long, chatty queue has formed.

Most of the youngsters say they regularly eat lunch from the van. Some also go to the local chippie or Chinese takeaway a couple of days a week.

What none would consider, however, is having a school dinner. In the words of one child: "I'd rather starve than eat that minging rubbish."

The children are not just robotically stuffing their faces with junk. Many have absorbed the healthy eating message, but are making what they see as informed choices.

Samantha Herron, 16, says is all about moderation. "Sometimes I have a roll on sausage at lunchtime, but then I go to the gym after school and eat a healthy dinner at home," she says. "I know all about what foods I should and shouldn't be eating - I'm not stupid. Sometimes I have soup or a ham salad roll from the van, and they sell water and fruit juice as well as fizzy drinks. It's not all bad."

Asked if she would consider eating school dinners, she bursts out laughing. "No way," she says, screwing her face up. "They're horrible. If the van wasn't here, me and my friends would probably go down to the shops on Dumbarton Road instead. They can't make us eat school dinners. It's our right to choose how we spend our lunch money."

Fellow fifth-year pupil Nathan Ross, also 16, says it would be wrong to force S1 pupils to stay in over lunchtime. "How unfair would that be? Especially when everyone else in the school was allowed to go wherever they want."

A van worker says: "The school must be doing something wrong if all the kids want to come to me at lunchtime. I only sell about four burgers a day, and we offer healthier options like soup and salad. Eating one fried meal a day doesn't do anyone any harm.

"It's up to the parents to give them a healthy meal at night. They've threatened to give us the boot before.

"If they do, the kids will just move on and spend their money at chip shops and takeaways."

How 'fat, old scrubber' joined Oliver's army
By MARIANNE TAYLOR

IT took a celebrity chef to show the nation just how bad our school dinners had become.

Jamie Oliver's crusade against turkey twizzlers, chips and chicken nuggets went all the way to Westminster, as he revealed just how unhealthy - and indeed cheap - the food served to our children was.

The programme was filmed in England, where many local authorities had less than 50p per day to feed each child. In Scotland, the average spend was higher, though all too often the nutritional value of the meal was not.

Oliver got more money out of ministers and local councils, and made school dinners the hottest topic in the land.

But the Channel 4 show, Jamie's School Dinners, attracted hostility from both children and parents.

Who can forget the sight of parents passing their offspring chips through the railings of a comprehensive in Rotherham? Now, one of them has become Oliver's closest ally.

Julie Critchlow was called a "fat, old scrubber" by Oliver when he witnessed the railings incident. She became a national figure of hate in the tabloids and was pilloried on radio phone-in shows.

But instead of giving up, Oliver recruited her for his next healthy eating crusade, Ministry of Food, which aims to open a cooking school in every town.

Inspired by Ms Critchlow, Oliver chose Rotherham as his guinea pig town and immediately turned to her for help.

She eventually embraced the idea and has now learned to cook, passing healthy recipes on to hundreds of relatives and friends.

"I wanted to smack him in the mouth," Ms Critchlow said on the show. "But I can safely say now that he is 100% genuine and really cares about people."