A secondary college headteacher has criticised “completely unacceptable” foods served to pupils at his personal college, challenging to grasp “how difficult is it to bake a potato?”.
Jason Ashley, head of Redbridge Society College in Southampton, despatched a letter to folks complaining about canteen lunches on 12 March.
In it, he wrote: “I can no longer keep this from you. You’ll often hear me say ‘if it’s good enough for my own children, it has to be good enough for yours’.
“Frankly the meals this is served within the canteen is totally unfavourable, such a lot so, that if my very own youngsters’s college served this I’d be exceptionally unsatisfied.”
He explained the school had “incorrect regulate” over what the gotten smaller catering corporate, Chartwell’s, made up our minds to handover.
Southampton Town Council stated the college has a non-public finance initiative (PFI) agreement for outsourced services and products, because of this a control corporate recruits specialist corporations to handover what the college wishes.
Within the letter, which has been broadly circulated on social media, Mr Ashley incorporated a choice of pictures of foods served on the college, together with baked potatoes, chips, and a roast dinner.
He stated he and his colleagues had been in “numerous meetings” to speak about issues however: “I am simply fed up with the lack of progress being made.
“We now have concluded with our photograph proof that Chartwell’s do appear to be not able to ‘bake a potato’ as it should be. In recent years, parts have shriveled, while costs have risen.”
He added that for “many” of his scholars, “a school meal is so important”, that means: “I can no longer tolerate, provide reasons for, or even justify to you the unacceptable nature of the food.”
Redbridge Society College. Pic: Google
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Mr Ashley signed off the letter: “I will leave you to decide with a selection of photos taken (and this is served to staff) for you to make up your own mind.
“I’m hoping that you’re as wrathful and as dissatisfied as me. After all I retain asking myself ‘how tricky is it to bake a potato?'”
‘Staffing demanding situations’
A spokesperson for Chartwell’s stated there were “operational and staffing challenges” on the college in contemporary weeks and it has “put in place a project team to rectify issues at the site”.
“We apologise that in this instance our usual level of service has fallen below the high standards we demand,” they stated in a remark.
“We are committed to working in collaboration with the school and are implementing an immediate action plan to rectify these issues.”
They added that costs have no longer risen in two years regardless of an “exponential increase in costs” and their portion sizes have no longer modified.
A Southampton Town Council spokesperson stated: “Under normal circumstances schools within Southampton manage their own catering contracts.
“On the other hand, Redbridge Society College is a PFI college. This leads to the college having modest or incorrect regulate over the trait of the services and products supplied.”
