School Meals Stories

Spam fritters, cheese flan, jam roly-poly, and custard. These evocative dishes conjure vivid images of school meals from the twentieth century. Whether loved or loathed, school meals have been a fixture of British childhood for generations, a collective experience often remembered with equal parts nostalgia and distaste.                                                        

Our project, The School Meals Service: Past, Present – and Future? explores the history of school meals alongside contemporary experiences. The aim is to inform future policy and provision, drawing on a rich tapestry of voices and perspectives. As well as researching the policy history of school meals in Britain, we have conducted a new set of oral history interviews with former pupils, parents, teachers and catering staff to explore the lived experience of the School Meals Service since the 1930s. To reach further back to the Service’s inception in 1906 we have used material from autobiographies, oral history collections and memoirs. We are also working with a network of partner schools across the UK, talking to children, families, teachers and catering staff about their views of school meals today.             

A key question driving our research is to what extent school meal experiences transcend generations and what this reveals about the emergence of what Ville Kivimäki, Antti Malinen and Ville Vuolanto term ‘communities of experience’ in the past. In exploring this, we also interrogate how individual narratives reflect broader societal change. To capture these intergenerational perspectives, we have adopted creative, participatory methods, including group interviews, arts-based activities, and even food tastings.

Informal conversations (sometimes over shared meals) have proven particularly effective in eliciting rich sensory and emotional memories which are often absent from traditional historical sources. For example, a group of friends in Glasgow, now in their 70s and 80s, shared memories of their ‘play pieces’. These were home-made snacks which they either brought to school themselves or which their mothers would bring at breaktime. We only know about this practice, which seems to have been widespread in Glasgow in the 1940s and 1950s, from this group interview:

Participant C: Came to school at 11 o’ clock and put food through the gates for your break at 11, because the gate when you get into school, the door was locked, and when the bell went because it was 11, you could go down to the gate and the parents were there giving your wee piece in. That was your break.

Heather Ellis: [Overlapping] That I have not heard before. That’s, yeah. [Murmurs of ‘yeah’ in the room]. Was that quite common, was that in all the schools? [Murmurs of agreement]

Participant B: Yeah, if mum was about she’d come down to school with your play piece…

Heather Ellis: But they come at breaktimes instead of lunchtimes?

Participant B: Play would just be a piece and jam or maybe a couple of –

Participant D: Took my play piece to school wrapped in the bread paper. A piece and jam or something, wrapped up in my school bag for playtime.

Yet, semi-structured one-to-one oral history interviews still form the backbone of our work. These interviews, while typically individual, reveal intergenerational layers through discussions of school, home, and food across time. Participants often move fluidly between their roles as children, parents, grandparents, teachers, or caterers, weaving their narratives with those of other family members and communities. 

Intergenerational perspectives frequently emerge organically during interviews. School meals, as a near-universal aspect of British schooling, naturally encourage comparisons between eras. Participants often reference family members to contextualise their memories, but they also reflect on their own experiences as children and adults, creating a rich dialogue between past and present. Angela, born in Leicester in 1956, was initially surprised when we asked her to reflect on her childhood experiences of school meals rather than focusing solely on her professional role as a catering manager. Similarly, Rebecca, who began by discussing her childhood experiences of school meals in the West Midlands in the late 1960s, revealed only later that she had also worked as a teaching assistant in the 1990s. These overlapping perspectives, initially dismissed as unrelated, often become central to understanding how individual and collective memories are constructed.

This dynamic, where participants intertwine personal memories with inherited or imagined ones, aligns with Anthony Bak Buccitelli’s concept of ‘intergenerational repertoires’. Buccitelli argues that oral history interviews often blend an individual’s life experiences with family narratives, creating a layered account that reflects both lived and transmitted knowledge. For many participants, family stories shape their relationship with school meals. Daniel, born in London in 1947, avoided school dinners in the 1950s after his brother described them as unpleasant:

Daniel: I think I may have been put off school dinners by my brother [Laughs].

Isabelle Carter: I wondered what led you to decide to go home for school dinners?

Daniel: Well, I think my brother, he described school dinners in a way that put me off. That you had to eat everything – you weren’t allowed to leave your plate with food on it [Laughs]. And I guess he might have put me off in some other ways, describing what the meals were.

The relationship of another participant, Julia, born in Birstall in 1948, with school meals was similarly influenced by her mother’s disdain for them. However, as a parent, Julia adopted a different approach, encouraging her children to embrace school dinners:

Julia: I wanted them to get used to staying for school dinners. I did not want them to have the experience that I’d had when they grew up, I think partly that was my mum, you know, she would say, ‘Oh, school dinners are not good’ [imitating mother’s voice]. I don’t know. Or my older sister maybe. So my children did stay.

This excerpt highlights the intergenerational negotiation of values and experiences surrounding school meals. Julia’s decision to encourage her children to have school dinners reflects a conscious effort to break from the negative associations of her own childhood. Historically, the late 1940s and 1950s were significant years in the development of school meals in the UK. Following the Education Act of 1944, which mandated the provision of nutritious school meals, there was a national effort to standardise and improve the quality of meals offered to children. However, these initiatives were met with mixed reception. While many families appreciated the economic relief and the focus on balanced diets, others, like Julia’s mother, viewed school meals as inferior compared with home-cooked alternatives. Julia’s reflection illustrates how individuals may reinterpret familial narratives, transforming them into positive actions for the next generation. Her actions also underscore the emotional and social significance of school meals during this period, as they symbolised both state intervention and a shift in parental responsibility for children’s nutrition. By resisting her mother’s critical stance, Julia redefined the role of school meals in her family’s life, using them as an opportunity to foster resilience and community while embracing broader societal change. Yet Julia also recognised the enduring influence of her mother’s cooking habits. Despite her efforts to break from past practices, her approach to family meals often mirrored the generational patterns she sought to move beyond:

Julia: I’d cook a meal when my husband came home at half past six. So yeah, and I tended to be a good, plain, old-fashioned cook. I remember making lasagne and my husband was not, well, he didn’t like it, he wasn’t happy. So, yeah, I’d tend, and even now, I tend to cook like my mum used to cook, you know.

This interplay between continuity and change illustrates how intergenerational repertoires persist, even when individuals consciously try to redefine them. Julia’s experience highlights the deep-rooted nature of familial practices, particularly surrounding food, which are often shaped by cultural norms and economic conditions. While she sought to diversify her family’s eating habits, the resistance she encountered from her husband and her own inclination toward ‘plain, old-fashioned cooking’ reflect the powerful influence of tradition. This tension underscores the complexities of navigating personal identity and family expectations within broader societal shifts, such as the post-war embrace of convenience foods and international cuisines.

Julia’s interview also reveals the extent to which a one-to-one oral history interview can contain traces of other voices as reported by the interviewee. In the extract below, we hear Julia not only remembering what her son, Robert, would say when she made him an after-school snack as a child, but also imagining how he might react if able to hear the interview while it is being recorded:

Julia: But then I used to pick them up from school at half past three and I used to give them a snack. Now, if my older son’s sitting in the room listening to this, he’ll laugh. He came home one day with his little friend Sam, his friend, said: ‘Oh, we’re having’ – whatever it was we were having – and Robert [Julia’s son] said, ‘we’re having something better than that when I get home!’ [imitating child’s excited voice]. ’We’re having fish paste sandwiches!’

The stories participants share about school meals often contribute to the construction of intergenerational family identities. Liz Gloyn and her colleagues, in their work on ‘family archives’, argue that objects and narratives passed between generations communicate familial values and characteristics. These processes, they suggest, reinforce ‘cross-temporal family identities’ that connect past, present, and future.

In our research, similar dynamics emerge. Parents often recount their children’s school meal experiences with pride, framing them as extensions of family identity. Juliet, born 1959 in Boston Spa, for example, described her son’s assertiveness about food quality when he was growing up as a child in the 1990s, as a reflection of her own approach:

Julia: I think he quite liked the food actually.

Isabelle Carter: Mm, I was going to ask.

Julia: They did insist at one time, and he’s like me [both laugh]. He’s particular too, can’t imagine where he got that from [both laughing]. But yeah, I mean, at one stage they [the school] insisted that they have some fruit. And he [laughing] God, actually, he is a chip off the old block! Because he refused to eat an apple because it wasn’t nice [laughs]. So yeah, he’s just like his mother!

Although school meals are often framed as a shared experience, our research highlights the diversity of individual and intergenerational perspectives. For some, school meals evoke memories of austerity and control, as in Daniel’s recollections of being forced to eat everything on his plate. For others, they represent moments of community and care, as Julia’s experience of encouraging her children to embrace school dinners illustrates. These differing accounts reflect broader societal shifts, from the rationing of the mid-twentieth century to contemporary debates over nutrition and child welfare. The intergenerational dimensions of school meals provide a valuable lens for examining the evolving relationship between food, education, and society. By exploring these narratives, we can better understand how historical experiences shape contemporary attitudes and practices and, crucially, how they might inform future policy.