More of Gloucestershire’s schoolchildren, big and small, are choosing to eat healthy school dinners.

On the day that the School Food Trust reported that more healthy school dinners are being eaten nationally, Gloucestershire County Council can reveal a similar picture locally.

Twelve primary and secondary schools have seen approximately half of their pupils eating school dinners with some showing big increases in uptake over the last 12 months.

At St Lawrence Primary School in Lechlade, 59% of pupils have a school dinner and the number of pupils choosing the hot lunch option has increased by nearly 53% in a year. At Chipping Campden School, 48% of pupils choose to have a school dinner, which is an increase of just over 14% since this time last year.

The encouraging results are backed up by pupils responses about Healthy Eating in this year’s Online Pupil Survey. 73% of primary pupils now report the food served in school allows them to eat healthily, compared to only 53% who reported they could eat healthily in back in 2006 There were also increases in pupils saying the look, taste, choice and amount of food served has improved. These improvements were also mirrored in the secondary pupil responses.

Cllr Jackie Hall, Cabinet Member for Education, said: “The county council’s primary schools contract with Edwards and Ward has resulted in a higher specification for food quality and additional time for kitchen staff to prepare healthy food.” “The positive results from the Online Pupil Survey are also very encouraging and have shown a big improvement since the first survey in 2006.”

Kirsty Pritchard, Health & Wellbeing Team Manager, said; “We are very proud of our results which are the result of a lot of hard work from a wide range of people including school cooks, headteachers, school bursars and governors, pupils and parents.

Jane Woof from Edwards and Ward, said: “Edwards and Ward are working really hard in conjunction with Gloucestershire County Council to continue to deliver quality and service for primary schools in Gloucestershire. This hard work is reflected in the continual increase in healthy meal uptake throughout the schools network.

“We at Edwards and Ward are extremely pleased with this improvement, and will continue to strive towards further development.”