How and why was the research set up? The School Food Trust - an independent charity but largely sponsored by the Department for Children, Schools and Families - believes that eating well during the school day produces a range of positive outcomes. In 2007, it carried out a small trial in primary schools to see whether healthier meals and improvements to the dining environment would make a difference to how young children behaved in classes immediately after lunch.
The results were positive, which led the trust to try again with secondary schools. This trial involved 11 schools in four local authority areas. Seven of the schools piloted a range of interventions, while four control schools carried on in their normal way.
And what did they do? In the schools that introduced new systems there were changes to both the food supplied and to the dining environment. Menus were changed to be compliant with new nutritional standards, plus there were healthy eating workshops, taster sessions, themed weeks and better marketing, such as menus with pictures. Changes to the environment included altering the layout and queuing arrangements, redecorating the dining room with murals and artwork and supplying new furniture.
Then, back in the classroom, trained, independent observers used systematic observation techniques - apparently previous studies had used only subjective impressions - to assess the behaviour of pupils before and after 15 weeks of the new arrangements.
What were they measuring? They looked both at how well students carried out tasks requiring concentration and a relatively high level of engagement, and also at disengagement - what we non-scientists call "messing about". The assessors did not know whether they were in a control or intervention school.
And the survey said? Strip away some of the jargon about odds ratios and confidence intervals, and you are left with a figure suggesting that students in intervention schools were 18 per cent more likely to be "on task" than those in the control schools, and 14 per cent less likely to be messing about.
But do we know why their behaviour changed? This is too small a study to be certain about that, and its authors are careful not to claim that this is simply a case of a healthier lunch giving pupils some kind of chemical uplift.
It could be that the opportunity to make healthier choices and the greater focus on a pleasant lunchtime experience has a positive effect on self-esteem and it is that which is carrying on into the classroom and improving learning behaviour. Researchers are currently analysing further data to look at how the interventions changed behaviour in the dining room as opposed to later on in the classroom.
All very interesting, but does anyone actually still have school lunches? Figures released in June show that 36 per cent of secondary school pupils are now having school meals. This is up by 0.5 per cent on last year, with cook Prue Leith, chair of the School Food Trust, claiming the "corner has been turned" in reversing the historic decline in take-up.
FACT FILE
- Every day around three million pupils have a school lunch in England
- The School Food Trust survey involved 164 pupils. Their behaviour was assessed in three modes: working alone, interaction with the teacher and working with peers
- School Lunch and Learning Behaviour in Secondary Schools: An Intervention Study
