Lessons in their own lunchtimes

In part two of our Trading Places series, looking at the different problems facing people in similar roles, Carmen Konopka talks to the catering managers of a state school and a public school 10 miles apart.

When state school caterer Wendy Seager and public school caterer Suzanne James compare notes on their jobs, there are more differences than one might expect.

The biggest difference is that the 400 pupils at Corbet School in Baschurch, Shropshire, the comprehensive where Seager is catering manager, will bring in sandwiches if they don't like what is on offer. She says that competition from packed lunches means she has to adopt an active marketing approach. "When I have quieter times, I put on special meals and theme days to try to bring them in," she explains, adding that about two-thirds of her pupils eat school meals, compared to the national average of one-third. She also has to provide more choices than the public school in order to attract the pupils.

For James, however, the 100 boarders and 350 day pupils at Oswestry School are a captive audience. The cost of their meals is included in their fees, and sandwiches from home are banned.

Corbet is similar in size to the independent Oswestry School 10 miles away, where James is assistant catering manager. Both are co-educational, but pupils at Corbet are aged 11 to 16, whereas Oswestry's are nine to 18.

At lunchtime, Oswestry offers two hot choices and a salad bar, plus a choice of two desserts. By contrast, Corbet offers three hot choices, a jacket potato bar, pizza or pasta, sandwiches and salads, with two puddings, home-made cookies, cakes, fruit and yoghurts.

Another major difference between the two schools is the time frame in which catering operates. Corbet offers only lunch, with a morning break service planned to start soon. At Oswestry, there is also cooked breakfast and high tea for the boarders, and supplies such as biscuits, drinks and sandwich ingredients are sent to the houses where the boarders live. What's more, catering at the public school operates seven days a week. "We always do a roast on Sundays," says James.

Both catering teams do occasional functions, such as speech days, but Oswestry provides more hospitality, such as afternoon teas for visiting sports teams. At Corbet, visitors can buy lunch, but the catering department does not offer teas.

The variation in the meal offerings means that catering staff at the two schools have different work patterns. Seager winces when James says she has to be in by 7am if she's on breakfast duty. "It wouldn't suit me because I have children," Seager explains. "My job is five hours a day, which fits in well with my family."

James says that she works full-time and her shifts include working every other weekend in term-time, which she does not find a hardship. "Every other weekend out of 34 weeks isn't a lot," she points out, "and it's great to have 18 weeks' holiday." All the catering staff at Oswestry are full-time during the term, while the team at Corbet is all part-time, with some working only a couple of hours a day.

As well as the different meal offerings and work patterns, the catering facilities also operate at different times. The lunch service at Oswestry is considerably longer than at its state counterpart. The public school serves lunch from 12.15 to 1.30pm.

Speed of service

At the comprehensive school, lunch is squeezed into just three-quarters of an hour. Seager explains that turnover is always fast because the children have other things to do in their lunch break. But the main reason for the speed of service is that lunch is served in the school hall. "Immediately after lunch, we have to clear the tables and clean the floor so the hall is ready for a PE lesson," she says.

There is no such pressure at Oswestry, where there is a 120-seat dining room used only for meals. James also points out that this means that a single service counter is adequate, whereas Corbet needs separate service counters for different types of meals to speed up the queues.

Although working hours and meal services are different, surprisingly the amount spent on meals in the two schools is similar. It is, though, impossible to give an exact budgetary comparison because the two do their costings in different ways.

Meals at Oswestry have a food and labour cost of about £1 per pupil, while lunches at Corbet are sold at £1.35. However, Corbet School receives a payment from Shire Services, the direct service organisation for Shropshire County Council which operates the catering, so the £1.35 has to cover this "profit" as well as food and labour.

As the two women discuss their jobs, it becomes apparent that the catering operation at Corbet gets a lot of back-up from Shire Services, which caters for about 250 schools in Shropshire and Hereford and Worcester, plus one in Colwyn Bay, Clwyd. At Oswestry, James says that her manager Brian Hickman has arranged visits to other schools to see if they do things differently, but otherwise the school is independent in terms of purchasing, training and staffing.

Seager can call on staff from other schools if, for example, sickness leaves her short-handed. James comments: "We're more isolated in that sense, but we have enough staff in our team so it never causes us a problem." There is even a helpline which catering managers can call.

When it comes to healthy eating, the focus at the two schools is different again. Shire Services actively promotes healthy eating, so Seager tries to incorporate wholemeal flour where possible, eliminates sugar in recipes such as those for yeast buns, cuts down on salt, and uses sunflower margarine for sandwiches. But her main "weapon" to promote healthy eating is giving the children a wide choice. She explains: "We have chips every day except for one chip-free day every half-term. But we've seen the volume of chips drop by about 10lb to 100lb a day because we always offer alternatives like mash, jacket potatoes and rice."

At Oswestry, James does not operate a healthy eating programme as such, but does consider health when cooking - for example, by reducing salt and by offering brown bread as well as white. She adds that the salad bar is very popular and accounts for about 100 portions per day. What about chips? "They are on the menu only twice a week at most," says James, which emphasises again the fact that the public school has substantial control over what its pupils eat, while the comprehensive has to use persuasion.

James adds that there are meetings with school prefects who make suggestions about menu changes but, unlike Seager, she does not have to contend with pupil power that even encompasses a school vegetarian society. "They are extremely well informed," she says. "If they ask a question which I can't answer, I give them the address of the manufacturer and they'll write letters to get the answers."