The Department for Education said it hoped the reforms would tackle childhood obesity, improve nutrition and support children’s concentration, learning and wellbeing.
Schools will be required to publish food policies and menus online with monitoring arrangements set to be developed alongside the Food Standards Agency, it said.
Pepe Di’Iasio, ASCL general secretary, said parents would feel “reassured” that schools were providing children with a healthy diet.
But on plans for enforcement, he added: “None of us would consider ourselves experts in health and nutrition. Don’t create another stick with which to beat head teachers when they are trying to do their very best to provide a healthy, balanced meal for those in our schools.”
He said schools needed “more investment” in catering facilities and in the “professional development” of school chefs to develop menus that “meet the ambitions” of the government.
Schools Minister Georgia Gould told BBC Breakfast she was confident schools could deliver healthy meals within existing budgets, without diverting funding from elsewhere, like teaching, and that schools would be given a year to implement the changes.
She said the government was “absolutely determined to support schools” to redesign their menus affordably.
As part of the changes, deep-fried chips will have to be oven-baked instead, and pasta dishes will need to be 50% wholewheat once a week. High-fibre bread will also become a requirement.
