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Hungry For Success - A whole School Approach to School Meals in Scotland - Consultation

CHAIRMAN’S FOREWORD

Dear Colleague

On 19 November 2001, Scottish Ministers announced plans to improve the provision, presentation and nutritional content of school meals for all children. An Expert Panel, under my Chairmanship, was established with a remit to provide costed recommendations and a fully developed implementation strategy to:

• establish standards for the nutritional content of school meals
• improve the presentation of school meals to improve general take up
• eliminate any stigma attached to taking free school meals.

Our interim report to Ministers sets out a vision for a revitalised school meals service in Scotland and presents a number of far-reaching recommendations to improve the quality and content of school meals, make school lunch more attractive to pupils and improve the take-up, especially for those entitled to free school meals.

Ministers have welcomed our interim report for its whole school, whole child, partnership approach and have authorised us to proceed to consultation with key stakeholders. Once we have considered the responses to our consultation exercise we will submit a final report to Ministers. We welcome your views on any aspect of our report, but in particular seek responses to the questions in our questionnaire.

We are aware that the timing of the start of our consultation period coincides with school holidays and that some respondents may not see this paper until the new school term. In view of this, we have set our deadline for responses at 11 October. We also intend to carry out a separate consultation exercise with pupils at the start of the new school term.

As you will see from our consultation list, we are seeking the views of a wide range of interested organisations. Please feel free to share it with other groups/individuals who have an interest in this important subject. It would also be helpful to receive a single co-ordinated response from each local authority, which reflects the views of all relevant interests within the authority.

You can also access our report and respond to our questionnaire via our website, which is located at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/education/schoolmeals or at the Scottish executive consultation website at http://www.gov.uk/views/views.asp

Thank you for completing this questionnaire.

Michael O’Neill
Chairman of the Expert Panel on School Meals

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