Government is trying, but could do better

Cassini. No, it's not a new pasta al tonno, but the name of the most expensive interplanetary project ever to be mounted.

In the same week that Nasa launches its nuclear-powered, seven-year exploration of Saturn - after years of financial battles - we hear that another UK local authority has been testing a smartcard system for the payment of school meals. Progress of a kind in the age of technology!

Smartcards in schools are not new. They have been around for more than four years, and the benefits are reported to be significant. Teachers and school administrators are relieved of the burden of handling money; children and teenagers are attracted by an "adult" method of paying; parents are pleased to know that their offspring are not spending dinner money on sweets or comics (or worse); and the absence of cash reduces the incidence of playground bullying.

The latest trial (in the London Borough of Sutton) also highlights the way in which cards can be used to monitor and improve individual diets. Controls can be placed on the cards, preventing, for example, the purchase of chips or sweet puddings. Efficiency in canteens is improved and queues - always a disincentive for active children - are reduced.

And local authorities claim that smartcards remove the stigma felt by children receiving income-support assisted free meals - something that has led to a 20% increase in the uptake of school meals in some areas, to the obvious advantage of catering companies.

There are lots of advantages; so why, when Nasa is planning to send a spacecraft two billion miles across the Solar System, do the majority of local authorities in England and Wales still collect handfuls of money for school meals in the same way they did when Neil Armstrong first stepped on the Moon nearly 30 years ago?

In most cases the answer is funding, or lack of it. The capital expenditure involved in setting up a smartcard system is regarded as being beyond the restrained budgets of most local authorities.

The Government, however, has stated its commitment time and again to education, even allocating funds in the last Budget to school building programmes. So isn't it time to start financing catering in schools as well the fabric of schools? And what better project to fund than a creditable method of payment?

Or is the search for central funding for school meals like looking for precious metals on Saturn - a long project, meeting much resistance on the way?

FORBES MUTCH

Editor,

Caterer & Hotelkeeper