EVEN tastier tucker will be on the menu for pupils at a Malvern school as its kitchen has a long-overdue refurbishment.

Fitters have been hard at work at Great Malvern Primary School, in Pickersleigh Road, since the start of the Easter holidays.

It is the first time in more than 20 years work has been carried out on the kitchen, which used to be fully-equipped until the Local Education Authority stopped providing hot meals in the 1980s.

Cook Sandra Hide has since had to manage serving about 150 meals a day from a small kitchenette with one cooker.

The school managed to set aside £25,000 of Government cash for the work, which will see two new cookers, fridges, new storage cupboards and extractor fans fitted.

A new floor and heated counters for the meals are also being installed, the kitchen is set to get a fresh lick of paint and builders have increased the size of the serving hatches.

Headteacher Jonathan Sides said he hoped the new kitchen would give Mrs Hide the chance to improve dinners as she had hoped.

"Our cook has already been working very hard on producing a better-quality school meal for months now before Jamie Oliver brought it up.

"We just thought if we improved the facilities it was bound to have a knock-on effect."

In the meantime, pupils are being served cold lunches and the school has also had to put its "breakfast club" on hold. The club started at the end of February as teachers realised some pupils were coming to school without eating breakfast. The school provides a selection of cereals, toast and a glass of juice.

Meanwhile the work on the kitchen is expected to be complete by today.