The aim of the ESRC School Meals Service (SMS) project (2023-2025) was to explore the achievements and limitations of the UK SMS from its inception in 1906. The research questions are as follows:  1) What have been the aims, achievements and limitations of the SMS, for schools, communities and the everyday lives of pupils since its inception in 1906? 2) What lessons can be learned from the past and current lived experiences of the SMS for future provision of school meals suited to the conditions of the 21st century? Through a combination of historical and ethnographic approaches, it discovers the service's impact on schools, communities and pupils and what lessons may be learned from the lived experiences of SMS recipients, teachers and catering staff, both now and in the past. Drawing on the conceptual framework of a 'usable past' (Tyack and Cuban 1994), the project is the first systematic policy and social history of the SMS from its beginnings in 1906 until the present day, combined with an ethnographic study of the experience of school feeding by children in UK schools today. This combination of historical and contemporary ethnographic research will enable a longitudinal assessment of the current challenges facing the SMS. Insights drawn from the research allow the project team to offer critical, historically informed recommendations to both policy makers and practitioners designed to secure the future of the SMS in the UK. This project is split into three strands of work which include: 1) policy history, 2) social history, 3) ethnographic case studies. This paper explores strand three by introducing current day experiences of the SMS, specifically examining ideas around how school food policy is classed, gendered and racialised (Lalli, 2023).

Following the completion of a set of targeted ethnographic case studies (Hammersley and Atkinson, 2019) involving four partner schools across the UK in Bradford, London, Cardiff and Glasgo, we are currently writing up findings. The methods of data collection included observations across the partner schools in gardens, dining spaces and classrooms. These involved ‘hanging out’ sessions designed to capture the informal conversations and social interactions of participants. We also conducted 80 interviews with teachers, catering staff, pupils and parents to learn more about the cultural makeup of the school and the place of food within it amongst families from different backgrounds.

In this paper, we examine how experiences of school meals and food education in schools differ amongst pupils with different intersectional identities and are shaped by classed, gendered, and racialised school food policies, before concluding by considering what the future of the School Meals Service may hold for an increasingly diverse population.

Hammersley, M. and Atkinson, P. (2019) Ethnography: Principles in Practice, 4th edn. London: Routledge. Lalli, G. (2023) Schools, Space and Culinary Capital, London: Routledge. Tyack, D., and Cuban, L. (1994) Tinkering Toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform, Harvard: Harvard University Press.