12 September 2023
The Minister for Children and Education, Deputy Inna Gardiner, has announced the next stage of the school meals programme and confirmed her intention for school meals to be available in all Government-maintained primary schools by September 2024.
This term, school meals will be rolled out at Grands Vaux, Plat Douet, and Springfield schools.
Pending the completion of building works, a further five schools - Bel Royal, St Saviour, Rouge Bouillon, First Tower and d'Auvergne are anticipated to rollout hot meals from April 2024. The remainder of primary schools are scheduled to follow by September 2024.
The ongoing programme rollout is supported by an additional £1.6 million in funding, as agreed in the Government Plan 2023 – 2026. This funding has been used to create serveries in each school and provide the needed equipment and staff to deliver hot meals each day.
Hot school meals are currently served in five schools – Janvrin, St Luke's, Samarès, St Peter and St Martin. Meals for these schools are – and will continue to be – delivered in partnership with local provider Flourish, part of the charity, Caring Cooks.
To deliver the increased number of hot meals each day, the Minister has confirmed that the meals produced and served by Flourish will be supplemented by other producers. The meals for Grands Vaux School will be produced by Flourish.
Meals for Plat Douet School and Springfield School will be produced at the Health and Community Services Central Production Unit at St Peter's Technical Park. Roughly 375 meals will be produced to standard requirements, within the current opening hours of the technical park.
To deliver the additional meals required for Bel Royal, St Saviour, Rouge Bouillon, First Tower and d'Auvergne from April 2024, the Government has invited expressions of interests from additional local providers.
Providers who want to submit an expression of interest have until 12pm on Monday 25 September via the online procurement portal. More information is also available via the online portal.
Minister for Children and Education, Deputy Inna Gardiner, said: "When children have regular access to healthy food, we see improvements in concentration, energy, and engagement while they are at school.
"In the long term, healthy eating habits are linked with better overall health and a lower risk of some diseases. However, we know that it is more challenging to provide a healthy packed lunch, especially with the increased food prices we've seen over the last year.
"I am working with officers to make sure that more children can benefit from healthy hot meals. To scale up the programme to the numbers needed, I am pleased to say that we will continue our successful partnership with Flourish, and we look forward to working with the team from the Health and Community Services catering department and building new relationships with further providers."
"Together, we will continue to make progress in delivering this incredibly ambitious – and incredibly important – programme of work."
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