CHEAP bangers and burgers will be banned from Worcestershire schools from next September - despite some children thinking it is their 'human right' to be given chips every day.
Education secretary Ruth Kelly has said school kitchens would be upgraded, in an announcement broadly welcomed by parents and teachers.
Sweets, chocolates and fizzy drinks would no longer be available anywhere in schools. Meals in Worces-tershire, are provided by catering companies chosen by individual schools. One company, Shire Services, said more money would allow it to provide better quality food.
Janet Norton, the company's general manager, said: "We've seen a slight decline in take-up since we introduced healthy menus and some parents have claimed it's against their children's human rights not to be served chips every day.
"But we work with our suppliers to ensure the nutrition content in our meals is high, that products have high meat content and are lower in sugar and fat.
"We don't have turkey twizzlers for example and we are introducing new dishes, for instance Mediterranean lamb couscous, which has proved surprisingly popular.
"In some ways, there's an imbalance between the schools that want a profit and those people who want healthy eating."
Clive Corbett, the headteacher of Pershore High School, said improving school meals was "very much at the forefront" of his school policy and he welcomed the Government's plan to ban junk food.
"The key is to have quality ingredients and, with more money, the company can spend more on its ingredients.
"We have already taken giant strides in this respect. We have replaced fizzy drinks in our vending machines with water and fruit juices."
Margaret Probett, the headteacher of Warndon Infants' School, where the school kitchen was turned into a classroom in the 1980s, said providing better quality food was a 'great idea'.
"At our school, children eat sandwiches and with supportive parents, children can now get a balanced meal in their lunchboxes," she said.
Worcester MP Michael Foster said the "chickens are coming home to roost" for the Tory-controlled county council that axed school kitchens in the 1980s.
"The decisions the county council made in the 1980s are haunting us now and that should be a lesson that we never forget in Worcestershire."
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