School meals do not have a given place in Swedish school’s quality management

Olsson, Cecilia; Waling, Maria

doi:10.1177/0017896916644000

Cited by 8 publications

(12 citation statements)

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“…communication of the definition of a pedagogical meal. Including school lunch in the schools’ internal quality management was also associated with taking advantage of teachers’ and school meals staffs’ competence within the area of food and health (Olsson and Waling, 2016).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

School lunch as a break or an educational activity

Waling

Olsson

2017

Self Cite

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Purpose The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to explore to what extent teachers eat together with pupils during school lunches and their attitudes toward using these lunches to reach the educational goals stated in the Swedish compulsory school curriculum; and second, to study to what degree teachers see themselves and school meal personnel as role models during school lunches. Design/methodology/approach A questionnaire was completed by 3,629 teachers in Swedish schools. Findings In total, 90 percent of the teachers ate lunch together with the pupils one or more days per week. The majority reported that meals were fully (54 percent), or partially (40 percent) subsidized when they were eating with pupils. In total, 72 percent thought that school lunches should be considered part of the school’s educational activities while 28 percent thought that it should be a time to get a break from educational activities. Most teachers thought that school lunches could be useful for learning about the issues of food waste and healthy eating while there were more diverse views on using lunches for learning about fundamental values. A majority of the teachers considered themselves to be role models in the school meal situation. Practical implications The authors suggest that the educational component of the school meal per se should be regulated in the Educational Act together with guidelines from the Swedish National Agency for Education. Originality/value This study is unique since it covers a previously little studied area; teachers’ attitudes toward using the school lunch situation for educational purposes.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

School lunch as a break or an educational activity

Waling

Olsson

2017

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“…However, actual adherence to policies and guidelines regulating Swedish school lunches varies in practice. A study by Olsson and Waling (2016) showed that 50% of the participating school leaders did not include the school lunch in the IQM. Those who reported that school meals were included in the school's IQM were more likely to see school meals as a constituent part of their educational activities.…”

Section: School Lunch In Swedenmentioning

confidence: 99%

Between good intentions and practical constraints: Swedish teachers’ perceptions of school lunch

Berggren

Olsson

Rönnlund

et al. 2020

Cambridge Journal of Education

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In Sweden, pupils eat tax-funded school lunches, often in the company of teachers. This article focuses on Swedish compulsory school grade (ages 7-15) teachers' (n = 823) perceptions of the school lunch in terms of intentions and daily practice. Analysis was based on written answers for an open-ended question that was part of a questionnaire focusing on teachers' attitudes towards school lunch as a pedagogical activity. It was found that participating teachers saw the potential of the school lunch, placing emphasis on the social interaction that takes place in the school restaurant and the possibility of meeting pupils in a more informal setting. However, a key outcome was teachers' depictions of the struggle between ideals and reality with the effect that teachers were not always provided with favourable conditions for school lunch interactions. It is important to address this in order to improve mealtime practices and the experience of school lunch.

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“…At school level, the inclusion of school meals in internal quality management systems, as also required by the new law, is quite low. By 2016 only half of schools surveyed by Olsson and Waling had done so [27]. Of municipalities with local policy documents, only 58% had followed these up within the previous three years [26].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

What works to improve school lunch nutritional quality - legislation or self-audit? Medium-term results from Sweden

Patterson

Andersson

Elinder

2021

Preprint

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BackgroundPoor monitoring and evaluation leads to a lack of evidence regarding what works in terms of improving school meal quality. Sweden has a long-standing policy of universal free school meals but updated legislation regarding nutritional quality came into effect in 2011. To coincide with this, we built a fully automated web-based self-audit tool for schools, called School Food Sweden, in order to i) establish a national database on overall meal quality, covering six domains, and ii) help schools and municipalities improve, based on the implementation strategy of audit and feedback. We have previously examined the pre- and post-legislation period. In this paper we describe changes in one domain – nutritional quality – in the years since the new legislation and examine if repeated use of the tool was associated with improvements.MethodsPrimary schools in Sweden self-selected to use the tool between March 2012 and July 2019 and audited a four-week lunch menu. Date of audit, number of audits per school (1-9), how often schools accessed their feedback (% of times) and school characteristics were noted. Factors associated with meeting nutritional criteria were examined using variance weighted least squares regression and logistic regression, using both repeated cross-sectional and longitudinal design.ResultsAlmost half of all ca 4800 primary schools in Sweden signed up to the tool. Nutritional quality was audited by 1500 schools at least once. Repeated cross-sectional analyses showed the proportion of all schools meeting the criteria increased significantly between 2012/13 and 2018/19 (from 11% to 34%). For all schools, each extra audit completed increased the odds of meeting nutritional criteria by 1.30 (CI 1.20-1.41), controlling for region and time since the introduction of legislation. In a longitudinal analysis (schools with repeat audits, n=774), both number of audits and the frequency of accessing previous feedback reports were predictors of meeting the nutritional criteria (OR 2.02, CI 1.23-3.31), even after adjusting for time since the introduction of legislation and number of days since the previous audit.ConclusionsBoth legislation and self-audit with automatic feedback appear effective in helping schools to improve school meal quality. Self-audit may be an essential complement to legislation, or a promising alternative in settings where regulation is not an option.

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School meals do not have a given place in Swedish school’s quality management

Cited by 8 publications

References 20 publications

School lunch as a break or an educational activity

School lunch as a break or an educational activity

Between good intentions and practical constraints: Swedish teachers’ perceptions of school lunch

What works to improve school lunch nutritional quality - legislation or self-audit? Medium-term results from Sweden

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