The Food for Life Partnership (FLP) and Local Authority Caterers Association (LACA) is calling on the government to adopt their six steps to transform the school food culture.

The lottery funded partnership, which includes the Soil Association and Health Education Trust among its partners says the government’s Child Health Strategy, promised for the spring, has now been shelved until the autumn while the school meal service is at risk of collapse.

Now FLP has written with the backing of LACA to education secretary Ed Balls calling on him to implement their six steps :Every pupil to eat healthy and climate-friendly school meals by 2015; School meals to be run as an education service, not a commercial business; the government should reinstate the obligation on local authorities to “provide a school meal suitable in all respects as a main meal of the day” by 2011; 50p per pupil per school meal from government to achieve a £1 ingredient spend while allowing take-up to rise; more paid hours for school cooks to prepare fresh food; at least 12 hours of cooking lessons a year for every pupil up to key stage 3 by 2011; and every pupil to have direct experience of food growing and production, in school gardens and on farms, by 2011.

Emma Noble, Director of the Food For Life Partnership said: “The government needs to rescue the school meals service or it will end up serving no-one. School meals provide one of the most important tools the government has to tackle obesity, diet-related ill health and the significant contributions to greenhouse has emissions made by farming and food. It must act now.”

The proposed package would require an extra £291.5m (rising to £734m if school meal take-up reaches 100 per cent) of government investment a year and necessitate building 4,025 new school kitchens.

Sandra Russell, chair of LACA said: “School meal providers nationally are encountering financial challenges and a number of organisations and individual schools are operating with a trading deficit. If this continues without resolution, then LACA believes that many will be considering the future of their service.”