Boarders 'vocal in their unhappiness' on food guidelines

State boarding school headteachers, including a Surrey headmaster, are pleading with ministers to change healthy dinner rules that have made it "illegal" for them to give a child a sweet treat after lessons.

They say that strict guidelines introduced three years ago banning snacks including cakes, biscuits and sweets, are inappropriate.

While the rules, which cover everything from breakfast clubs, through to tuck shops and after school clubs, do not impact as much on day schools, state boarding heads say they are affecting their pupils' meal times and snacks.

Paul Spencer Ellis, headmaster of Royal Alexandra and Albert School in Reigate, told the Times Educational Supplement: "The whole logic is that the regulations are for a day school where the parents aren't going to feed them properly at home, but in a boarding school we do all their meals.

"But, as it stands, pupils come into the boarding house after school and they want to grab some carbs and it's illegal. It's illegal for me to give them a sticky bun."

He claims the rules do not make sense because he is allowed to give pupils a pudding at lunch time, but banned from providing something similar after school.

In the school's latest Ofsted social care inspection inspectors found that boarders were "vocal in their unhappiness" at the food guidelines, which had led to the withdrawal of sausages and butter from lunch tables.

The report said: "While there is no doubt that there is a necessity for clear guidelines with regard to the food provision for children, this must be taken in the appropriate context. It is difficult to see how the new guidelines are appropriate to boarding schools."

Melvyn Roffe, vice-chair of the Boarding Schools Association and principal of Wymondham College, said Education Secretary Michael Gove should make it his "number one priority" to reassess the rules. "The rules were written without any sense that boarding might be different," he said.