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Feeding our future: chef Mark Sergeant talks school catering
School caterers are key to a campaign to give children healthy, nutritious meals, says top chef
Mark Sargeant
A regular on BBC’s Saturday Kitchen, Mark has previously worked with Gordon Ramsay at Michelin-starred restaurants Aubergine and Claridge’s for 13 years. Named Chef of the Year in 2002, Mark now runs his own restaurant, The Restaurant MS, in Folkestone, Kent.
Chef and father-of-two Mark Sargeant is passionate about giving every child the best chance to succeed at school and beyond. That’s why he jumped at the chance to become an ambassador for school meals industry body LACA. After a career at some of the UK’s finest restaurants, he’s focusing on its ‘critical’ Levelling Up School Food campaign and wants school kitchen campaigners to join him before it’s too late for this and future generations.
Why did you want to be an ambassador for LACA?
I have two daughters who’ve been lucky enough not to have to rely on free school meals. But in England alone two million children do. That’s a figure I just can’t get my head around. Caterers get £2.53 per child towards free school lunch, which sounds okay until you have to pay labour and you’re left with 85p. Throw in a huge increase in food prices – pasta up 75% and baked beans 60% – and the quality can suffer. School meals are served by dedicated, passionate catering teams, but it’s getting increasingly hard for them to cook good, nutritional food consistently. There’s just not enough money being ringfenced in the system for making balanced, quality dishes.
Why the campaign matters
If you earn more than £7,500 a year – the cut-off for free meals – it’s tempting to turn to crisps and doughnuts to feed your children. But it’s not healthy food to give them energy, feed their bodies and brains. For some, school food may be the only hot meal they have all day. That’s a tragedy because the child who is angry or distracted through hunger may become the adult who finds a cure for cancer. The service has been beyond the critical stage for some time and it’s only getting worse. We have to feed our children’s future, and our own.
What do you plan to do as LACA ambassador?
It’s important not to blame the proud chefs and caterers who do a brilliant job every day, but something’s got to give. To showcase the great food they produce and show MPs the financial challenges they face, I attended LACA’s Great School Lunch at Parliament to start conversations that the stunning lamb tikka, leek and red pepper quiche and focaccia they tried shouldn’t be the exception. I’d love our Levelling Up campaign to end with a petition at Number 10. We need ringfenced funding to deal with increased food and staff costs, or caterers will go under. That £2.53 has to rise too along with the income threshold. It isn’t a political thing. It’s a looking after our children thing.
Is Levelling Up School Food achievable?
Yes, if the will is there from everyone. I cried when the mum of a girl I’d given a cooking demo to told me her daughter had bought the veg on her way home and cooked her family the same stir fry. I want children like her to join their parents in a mini revolt and petition the government to insist on better food. Struggling chefs and their teams do an amazing job with the money they get, always trying to cook tasty meals with limited resources. But schools are having to bolster their budgets by taking money from elsewhere and that can’t be right.
“The service has been beyond the critical stage for some time and it’s only getting worse… it’s not a political thing, it’s a looking after our children thing”
- Mark Sargeant, ambassador for LACA
How can school caterers start the campaign?
In-school cooking demonstrations for parents and children are a great way to grow momentum, raise awareness of the funding issue and educate future generations. There are a wealth of quality products available from wholesalers that professional caterers can turn into wonderful meals, but they desperately need help financially.
What would a good result look like?
I know Jamie Oliver well, and his school dinners campaign in the early 2000s led to greater awareness and improvements in the type of food being served because of financial constraints facing school caterers at the time. We’ve come a long way since then, but the spend per child is still too low and it’s essential we nourish the future generations. We are very lucky to be in a first world country but even people in prison get more spend per head. I understand it’s not as easy as the government just giving more money, but increased support combined with mentoring young people to cook healthily has to be a starting point.
What would your message to frustrated school caterers be?
You are doing a fantastic job being imaginative and creative with your menus against a backdrop of massively challenging financial circumstances. It’s easily the hardest time I can recall for school kitchens. We need every teacher, parent and child to support you through the Levelling Up campaign with the goal of going to Downing Street with a petition demanding better food for every child. That is my hope for the future, but we can only do it together.
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