Young Curators – School Meal Experience

We started running our first Young Curators programme in October 2024, in partnership with the Museum of the Home, Quadram Institute, the School Meals Project, and Chefs in Schools. Designed to give young people hands-on experience in museums, participants aged 15-18 collaborated with museum professionals, academics, and food experts to conduct research that will contribute to our upcoming School Dinners exhibition. You can read more about their October residential trip here

In our latest blog update, one of our Young Curators, Janos, explores how school meal experiences vary across schools, time periods, and age groups.

In my research, I was interested in finding out about the differences between people’s experiences of school meals in different schools, times, and ages. I wanted to see how much variation there had been in people’s lifetimes in their school meals, and what factors had influenced this.

Through my oral history interviews I was able to gain an insight into what goes on behind the scenes in different types of schools. I learnt about the experiences of a chef and a lunchtime supervisor, which gave me a look into the differences in facilities between private and public schools, as well as that between primary and secondary. I found that there seemed to be huge amounts of variety across schools, and I got the impression there was little to no regulation of things like food freshness or variety- it seemed very much to be up to individual schools, and chefs seemed to have practically complete control over their menus, which of course could lead to both positive and negative results: sometimes the lack of regulation was freeing for chefs, but at other times it led to worse quality food, especially when the budget was too limited.

In my surveys I focused on the differences between primary and secondary schools. Some of my findings here were to be expected- such as the shorter average time for lunch at secondary school- but there were also many surprises. For instance, I found it interesting how there seemed to have been a shift towards more packed lunches during secondary school, and how despite the relatively short times given for lunch, the majority of people seemed to be content with them, which was not something I had expected. The quality of meals also seemed to be a fairly divisive issue, with relatively even splits in the data, although people’s opinion of school food seemed to improve in secondary school, which was again, not what I had expected.

Throughout my research, I also found it interesting how strongly many people felt about this topic, and how important an aspect of their lives it had been. Although there were some general trends, I also found much variation in what people thought about things like packed lunches, or their dining space. Many questions that I asked gave me very strong and evenly split answers, which suggested to me that there were huge amounts of variation, even between schools that should be similar, and that individual tastes matter a lot in this topic, and many things cannot be easily quantified, which is a potential difficulty for decision makers.

Ultimately, opinions on school meals are a highly personal thing, and this is represented in my findings with the variety of responses I got. It also shows how complex a task policy makers, and especially chefs have in deciding what to prepare, having to balance not only a wide variety of tastes and opinions, but also the equipment available to them, and perhaps most importantly, their often very limited budget. In the end then, my findings show the important role that school meals play in the lives of many children, and how the issue is a very complex one.

If I had had more time, I would have liked to conduct more interviews after doing my surveys to try and work out the reasons for some of the data. In particular, I would have liked to research further into opinions on secondary school food, since most of the people I surveyed were now in sixth form, or even older, so it would have been interesting to try and get them to think deeper about the topic, and see if time had altered their thoughts about it in any way. Surveys have many limitations, and I found I was able to get much more personal answers from interviews, so it would have been good to do more of these. I could also have gained more accurate data if I had surveyed a wider variety of people, especially younger people, since their opinions are not really represented in my findings.

Overall though, my research reveals the complexity and challenges of school meals, as well as a lot of the emotions tied to them, and this was a really fun and interesting experience which has taught me much about an aspect of everyday life I had never thought much about before!