Researchers receive a £1 million grant to investigate school meals service

A team of researchers have secured funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) to investigate the past, present and future of the UK School Meals Service.

Researchers Professor Gary McCulloch from IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society, Dr Gurpinder Singh Lalli from the University of Wolverhampton and Dr Heather Ellis from the University of Sheffield have been successful in a grant to work on a project entitled ‘The School Meals Service: Past, Present - and Future?’ to explore the aims, achievements, and limitations of the UK School Meals Service (SMS) from its inception in 1906.

Through a combination of historical and ethnographic approaches, the team aim to discover the service's impact on schools, communities and pupils and what lessons can be learned to improve the service.

The project will conduct the first systematic policy and social history of the SMS from its beginnings in 1906 until the present day, combined with an ethnographic study of the experience of school meals consumed by children today across four partner schools in Bradford, London, Cardiff and Glasgow.

Anecdotal evidence indicates that dissatisfaction with the school meals service can be traced back many years which was highlighted in the campaign led by celebrity chef Jamie Oliver in the early 2000s, against the use of cheap processed foods such as the now infamous 'Turkey Twizzlers’.

The team state the question can only be addressed with a deep, critical analysis of the history of the UK’s SMS, in terms of both the intention and impact of policy choices and implementation.

The research project will enable a longitudinal assessment of the current challenges facing the SMS and will allow the team to offer critical recommendations to both policymakers and practitioners designed to secure the future of the SMS in the UK.

Professor Gary McCulloch, Principal Investigator of the project at IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society, said: “I am delighted that the ESRC has funded this important and timely research project on the School Meals Service.  It will provide not only the first full history of the SMS over more than a century, but an overdue thorough exploration of its current position in schools and contemporary society. This is also a concerted attempt to build on this accumulated experience of achievements and setbacks to assess its future prospects in the 21st century.  I look forward greatly to working with colleagues at Sheffield and Wolverhampton to bring this to fruition."

Dr Gurpinder Singh Lalli,Reader in Education for Social Justice and Inclusion in the School of Education at the University of Wolverhampton said: “It is an absolute pleasure to receive this prestigious funding award from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). I would like to thank everyone who has supported my colleagues and myself on this journey and I look forward to engaging with key stakeholders in this project to inform future policy provisions in the UK." 

Dr Heather Ellis, Co-Investigator and Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Sheffield said: “I am very much looking forward to working with colleagues at University College London and the University of Wolverhampton on the first detailed historical and ethnographic study of the UK School Meals Service with a particular focus on the lived cross-generational experience of those receiving and preparing school meals. We hope that it will provide valuable and much-needed insight into the future development of policy and provision around school meals in the UK and internationally.”

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