Huppert Backs TV Chef To Ensure Academies Don't Serve Junk Food

Television celebrity chef, Jamie Oliver’s fight to get the government to make sure new academies and free schools don’t serve junk food to their pupils has been backed by Cambridge MP Julian Huppert.

Julian raised the issue with Education Minister, Michael Gove after he received a letter from Jamie and an email from a resident both expressing their concerns.

He has also signed a Commons’ Early Day Motion welcoming Jamie’s campaign and calling on Mr Gove to change the law to make academies and free schools serve food that meets nutritional regulations.

Julian said: “It is vital that our children receive good, nutritional meals, not only to promote healthy living now but also to teach them how to eat well for the future.

“We have children across the country who are obese because of poor diets and lack of exercise. We cannot afford to take any chances that this problem will be compounded by poor nutritional standards in our schools when we have introduced laws to protect against it.

“All schools teaching our children should be bound by the regulations put in place to safeguard the health of pupils in their care; there should be no exceptions.”

Mr Gove told Julian: “Free schools and new academies which have been set up from September 2010 are not required to comply with the school food standards.

“Studies by the School Food Trust now provide good evidence of the benefits of a balanced meal on pupils’ concentration, behaviour and ability to learn. Given this evidence we expect that free schools and academies will still want to promote healthy eating and good nutrition through the provision of high quality lunch services.

“We have asked the School Food Trust to survey the quality of food in a sample of academies in response to concerns raised by Jamie Oliver and we expect the trust to report to us within the next few months.”

The full wording of the EDM is as follows:

That this House recognises the impact of unhealthy eating and obesity on children's health and well-being; expresses its concern that academies and free schools opened since September 2010 are not required to adhere to the mandatory standards for school food; welcomes the joint Jamie Oliver Children's Food Campaign, Food for Life Partnership, LACA and School Food Matters Save Our School Food Standards campaign; and calls on the Secretary of State to amend the Education (Nutritional Standards and Requirements for School Food) (England) Regulations 2007 to require academies and free schools to adhere to the standards for school food so that the one million children now attending these schools can benefit from this commitment to their health and well-being.

Huppert Pushes Government To Put Life-Saving On School Timetables

Julian at the Westminster
launch of the Red Cross
campaign

MP Julian Huppert joined forces with a leading national charity today (Tuesday, May 15) to push the government to include life-saving skills on school timetables.

Julian and members of the British Heart Foundation met Education Minister, Nick Gibb following the charity’s high profile campaign for emergency life support to be taught in biology lessons.

The meeting came after Julian led on an open letter signed by 44 MPs to Education Minister, Michael Gove last month calling for schoolchildren to be taught CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation).

And he visited the British Heart Foundation shop in Cambridge’s Burleigh Street in January to support the campaign.

Julian has also give his backing to a similar campaign, Pupil, Citizen, Lifesaver being run by the Red Cross which was launched in Westminster last week with politicians, pupils and teachers.

“Teaching our children basic life-saving skills would put hundreds of thousands of potential lifesavers out on the streets every year,” said Julian, who used to volunteer with Cambridge’s St John Ambulance.

“We made a strong case to Nick Gibb for including life saving skills on the National Curriculum and he took on board the huge benefits that it could bring to society as a whole.

“Only a handful of primary schools offer this teaching at the moment. Putting it on school timetables across the country would mean that the next generation would be equipped to tackle an emergency situation calmly and efficiently and more lives could be saved as a result.”  

Huppert Welcomes Extra £12.5M For County’s Schools

Cllr Peter Downes

An extra £12.5 million of government funding for Cambridgeshire schools has been welcomed by Cambridge MP Julian Huppert.

The money is designed to relieve the pressure on school places and comes after Julian joined MPs from across the county to campaign for extra funding, raising the issue in the House of Commons.

He received a promise from Education Minister, Michael Gove to review the county’s grant funding and the latest investment is part of an additional £600 million for schools across England this year. It comes on top of the £800 million already announced for 2012-13 to address the shortage in pupil places.

Julian said “This extra money is good news and will so some way to addressing the massive shortfall in funding for schools across Cambridge and the county as a whole.

“I am pleased that we are putting money into schools; they have been neglected by previous governments for far too long. Educating our children must be one of our top priorities but we cannot give them the schooling they need and deserve without investment.

“Our schools have been near the bottom of the pile compared to other local authorities across the country and while this payment helps with school buildings, we are still millions of pounds short of the national average for what we can spend on our pupils. There is no room for complacency here.”

Liberal Democrat Peter Downes, Cambridgeshire County Council's Shadow Cabinet Member for Education said: "I am pleased that Cambridgeshire's plight is finally being recognised by the government.

“There is a growing demand for school places across the country and this county in particular, but until now there has never been the money to address this problem. Finally we have a government which is taking this issue seriously and I hope the coalition will continue to build on this and give Cambridgeshire schools the money they need.”

Opinion: Academies Overspend Revealed! (By Cllr Peter Downes)

Figures in a Government consultation paper on the funding of academies have revealed that Michael Gove’s policy of getting schools to convert to academies is expected to cost nearly £600 million more than planned over the two year period 2011 – 2013.
 
This confirms what Lib Dem activists have been saying for some time i.e. that the programme for converting schools to academies is costly and unsustainable, as well as being divisive and unfair.
 
When a school decides to leave its Local Authority (LA)  and become ‘independent’ (i.e. dependent on central government!), in addition to its standard funding it gets an extra grant called LACSEG (Local Authority Central Spend Equivalent Grant) to allow it to buy in the services it no longer gets from the LA.
 
Heads and Governors have done the sums and soon realised that the LACSEG gives them far more than they need and so they get a net bonus. In the case of large secondary schools, this might amount to £400,000 or even more.
 
The word spread quickly, hence the ‘dash for cash’ that has dominated the educational scene for the last year. Gove claims that Heads are attracted by freedom and autonomy (released from the shackles of bureaucratic LAs); in practice, Heads are going for the extra money, especially at a time when school funding is tight.
 
The LACSEG is partially recouped from the money that the LA spends on pupils with acute needs. This in effect transfers funds from those in greatest need to those with fewest problems. The rest of the money is top-sliced from the general grant to councils, whether or not they have any schools converting to academies! This crude method has incensed local councillors by its unfairness.
 
Figures published on July 19th show that the expected LACSEG spend on academies in existence and schools likely to convert within the next year will amount to £997 million (mid-range estimates).  The clawback from Local Authorities already announced and partially implemented is £148m for 11-12 and £265m for 12-13, making £413m in total.
 
This leaves a gap of £584 million. This is tantamount to a bribe to tempt schools to convert to academies in order to justify Gove’s flagship policy.
 
The consultation on what to do started on July 19th and ends on August 16th.
 
The country surely cannot afford a wasteful and unnecessary policy of this kind. Liberal Democrats in Parliament and in the Local Government Association must speak out about this. Liberal Democrats on school governing bodies are urged to dissuade their schools from converting to academy status.
 
In two years time there will be a new national funding formula for all schools which, we are told, will treat all schools fairly. That is something all Liberal Democrats ought to be fighting for.
 
Peter Downes is a former President and Funding Consultant of the Secondary Heads Association (now the Association of School and College Leaders), a Cambridgeshire County Councillor and Vice-President of the Liberal Democrat Education Association. He successfully proposed a motion opposing Academies and Free Schools at the Liberal Democrat conference in Liverpool last September.