NEW STATISTICS released by the Scottish government yesterday show huge differences between the number of children sitting down to school dinners in Tayside and Fife.

Despite the general trend of more primary pupils across Scotland choosing meals at school over the last year, Dundee and Perth and Kinross are telling a different story.

There were fewer children in Dundee opting for the meals, with only 41.6% eating them—a decrease on the previous year’s figure of 42.2%—and significantly below the national average of 49.6%, which was an increase of 1%.

Pupils in Perth and Kinross fell further below the average, with 41.2% sitting down to a meal provided by their school.

Angus was bucking the trend in Tayside—with 48.5% of its primary pupils choosing to go to ‘dinners.’

The largest amount of children having school lunches come from Fife, with a massive 60.9% eating the meals, much higher than the Scottish average.

This week Tayside Contracts announced that, despite a successful year, its catering unit had suffered a substantial reduction in meal numbers over the last few years since the Scottish Executive announced its Healthy Eating initiative.

New food regulations mean that from next term, primary schools will remove sweets and fizzy drinks from sale and chips will only be served as part of an overall balanced and nutritional meal.

A Dundee City Council education department spokesman said, “The city council encourages pupils of all ages to eat healthily and we work in partnership with Tayside Contracts on this.”

Secondary schools are not expected to move on to the healthier menus until August next year to allow them time to prepare.

The number of secondary school pupils taking school meals across Scotland fell from 44.9% in 2007 to 42.9% this year, and the differences in local authority areas continued.

Again, schools in Dundee fell well short of the average figure, with just 34.5% of those present on the day of the survey taking a school meal, however this was an increase on the previous year’s numbers of 31.5%.

The picture is even worse in Perth and Kinross, with 29.9% eating meals that the school has provided.

Angus and Fife again went against the grain by rising considerably above the national average.

In Angus, 49.7% of secondary pupils choose to eat at school, and this story continues in Fife with 57.8% doing the same, although this is a decrease of 1%.

Adam Ingram, minister for children and young people said, “Some older children have already got into bad habits and it will take time to get the message over.

“However, under the new regulations being introduced in schools, we aim to educate young palates and help young people to make good food choices.

“Some local authorities are showing encouraging increases in the uptake of school meals, which indicates that there are lessons to be learned from their success.”