This film is part of Free

Tiverton Grammar School Dinners

Lunch is served at Tiverton Grammar School

News 1975 2 mins Silent

From the collection of:

Logo for South West Film and Television Archive

Overview

Tiverton dinnerladies are preparing school meals at Tiverton Grammar School. In the 1970s school meals consisted of meat, veg, a carton of milk and a pudding. School meals would forever be stuck in the nation’s mind, lumpy mash, over cooked meat and veg, jam pudding sprinkled with dessicated coconut with those same lumps appearing in custard this time. Watch as the pupils tuck in!

In 1944 in was compulsory for schools to provide pupils with school dinners and a requirement to provide free school meals to those of low income families. 1980 saw Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Government abolish this idea and opened the school meal industry up for tender. This dramatically lowered the standard of food. This issue became a source of major debate when celebrity chef Jamie Oliver fought to improve the quality and nutritional meals being fed to our school pupils.