Yesterday we reported the refusal of city schools to back the controversial Cadbury's Get Active Scheme.

However, a school which won "healthy eating" status has confirmed it will make use of the controversial sports equipment offer - if pupils bring in tokens.

Despite serving additive-free food in its canteen, St Barnabas CE First and Middle School in Drakes Broughton will take advantage of the Cadbury's promotion if it means it can obtain new equipment.

The offer has been criticised for encouraging children to eat unhealthily, and taking advantage of underfunding in schools.

But headteacher Charlie Lupton said they would not be actively promoting the Get Active promotion in school.

"Children ought to have a healthy diet and eat chocolate in moderation only as part of a meal," said Mr Lupton.

"We restrict the eating of chocolate to lunchtimes. I won't be encouraging them to eat chocolate in their break, even if we get free sports equipment.

"We get approached by all sorts of companies offering promotions, such as Persil, Nestl and Walkers.

"I don't particularly like it but I want more equipment for the school. We don't do a great deal of them and I don't promote them.

"It's a bit wrong to target chocolate, but I feel the same about the others. They're sneaky because they give something for free but want something back.

"We'll do this one if parents bring in the tokens."

We do need treats for our wellbeing

HEALTHY eating in schools is a hot topic on the lips of many teachers, parents and health professionals.

The Cadbury's promotion is the latest in a number of drives to encourage consumers to purchase goods in exchange for free school equipment.

Cath Phillipson is the teacher advisor for healthy schools at Worcestershire County Council and she works in partnership with health authorities to make sure the messages they are sending out are the same.

"What we try to do and talk about in school is to take account of what goes in our bodies and what it does," said Ms Phillipson.

"We wouldn't dream of banning chocolate because that message doesn't mean anything to children.

"Chocolate in moderation is good and you have to have treats for your own wellbeing.

"We don't have an official standpoint from the education authority but we try to encourage children to look at how they might be manipulated by advertising."

"On a personal level I do get worried - it's always a difficult road to tread with these issues of sponsorship," said Ms Phillipson.

"I think it will be interesting to see how Cadbury's campaign goes but I don't think it will go down very well in our county."

The county's free fruit scheme has been touted as a success in Worcestershire. Ms Phillipson works with parents, as well as teachers and pupils, on a range of health education issues.

"We don't tell them what they should be doing," she said.

"We encourage them and support them. It's also about mental health as well as physical health."

Schools stick to healthy principals despite sweeteners from food firms

SCHOOLS forced to make teachers redundant because of funding cuts are sticking to their principles and rejecting Cadbury's "free sports kit for chocolate tokens" offer.

Despite suffering a shortfall in school budgets this year, schools say they are not prepared to go against the grain of their healthy eating push to take part in Cadbury's Get Active scheme.

Due to falling pupil numbers and a new funding formula schools are having to make redundancies. But even this is not enough to encourage them to promote the Get Active scheme.

"We try to take advantage of schemes like this to make the school the best we can," said Steve Gough, headteacher at Dines Green Primary School, Worcester.

"You begin to think of yourself as a charity and you need these handouts to survive.

"But because we're going for healthy eating status this is not one we would promote. It goes against everything we do in school."

The scheme, which is being run in conjunction with the Youth Sport Trust and has support from athlete Paula Radcliffe and boxer Audley Harrison, involves schools sending off vouchers for free equipment.

Popular schemes

It runs along the same lines as the free books and computer scheme that have been popular in the past.

The Cadbury scheme has been criticised by nutrition groups for promoting excessive eating of chocolate, but the Birmingham-based firm claims it will tackle obesity.

But in order to obtain a cricket set, a school has to collect 2,730 tokens. This is equivalent to half a million calories and would contain 33kg of fat. This is the weight of a healthy 10-year-old.

Dozens of primary schools in the county take part in the healthy schools scheme, which involves healthy options available for lunch and bans on chocolate and other unhealthy foods.

"As we're a healthy eating school we don't allow chocolate into school," said Maggie Goodwin, headteacher at St Clement's CE Primary School, on Henwick Road, Worcester.

"We're not encouraging children to collect these tokens."