The government is to announce an overhaul to school food standards in England that will lead to calorific classics such as fish and chips and steamed sponges being banned.
The new rules of the first major update to school food standards in 13 years will apply from September. They are part of efforts to lower the rates of childhood obesity, with data for 2024 released by the NHS in January showing that 24% of nursery and primary school children were overweight or living with obesity.
Describing the changes as “the most ambitious overhaul of school food in a generation”, the education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, said: “Every child deserves to have delicious, nutritious food at school that gives them the energy to concentrate, learn and thrive – meals that children will actually recognise and enjoy, backed by robust compliance so that good standards on paper become good food on the plate.”
Some changes that will come into effect in September 2027, such as making it mandatory for all school puddings to be made of at least 50% fruit – leaving the future of steamed sponges and jam doughnuts in doubt – while also banning all deep-fried items such as battered fish and chicken nuggets.
Henry Dimbleby, a co-founder of the Leon chain and co-author of the last rules update, the 2013 school food plan – described the new standards as “a rare chance to reset school food”. At the moment, schools are allowed to serve two portions of deep-fried food each week and desserts with less than 50% fruit three days a week.
Dimbleby said the changes would provide “wider access to free school meals and higher standards, with proper monitoring to help schools improve what ends up on the plate”, but would only work if the government and schools showed a proper commitment to it.
“September can mark the start of a new normal, where every child can count on a lunch that is both delicious and nutritious, and every parent can have real confidence in what’s being served,” he said. “Done right, it will boost children’s health, their academic outcomes and their chances of success in later life.”
In response to the new standards, five leading education and food organisations have formed the School Food Project, an initiative that will provide practical support to schools to help them produce healthier, better quality meals.
The project, a partnership of Bite Back, Chefs in Schools, Jamie Oliver Group, School Food Matters and The Food Foundation, has already raised £2.3m with the help of donations, and it aims to launch in September 2026 to coincide with the new standards being finalised and published.
The chef Jamie Oliver, who has campaigned for more than two decades to improve the quality of food that children eat inside and outside school, said he was “delighted this government is now updating and enforcing” standards, and described school food as the “most important restaurant chain” in the country.
“Twenty years ago, dog food had higher standards than school dinners,” he said. “From September, during term-time, schools will provide two-thirds of a child’s daily diet – a massive opportunity to improve health at scale.”
D’Arcy Williams, the CEO of Bite Back, a youth-led group that campaigns for healthier meals in school, praised the announcement, calling it a “long-overdue step towards improving the food young people rely on every day”, while stating there was still lots of work to be done and that “the scale of the challenge cannot be ignored”.
Williams said: “It is deeply worrying that so many children are consuming too much sugar, and that three-quarters of parents are concerned about what their children are eating. The reality is that the system hasn’t been working. We have standards that are meant to protect children’s health, but without proper monitoring and accountability, they haven’t been consistently enforced. That’s allowed a grab-and-go culture to take hold in many schools, where speed and convenience often come at the expense of nutrition.”
