Clearly, Whitehawk Primary School Could Do With A Cut In Their Budget

Why so?

Well, they've pretty clearly got too many staff with much time on their hands, if they've got time for this:

A school has banned chocolate as part of a healthy eating drive.

Pupils at Whitehawk Primary School are being asked not to bring chocolate bars in their packed lunches.

Oh, 'asked'? Silly JuliaM, if they are being asked, then it's not a prob...

Oh:

If the youngsters are spotted with chocolate it is confiscated and replaced with a healthy alternative.

Words fail me.

Teachers return the chocolate to the pupils at the end of the school day...

Ah? Well, that's not so bad then. I suppose. It's not as if they are...

Oh. Wait...

...and then write to the children’s parents urging them to send their youngsters in with healthier food.

I would love to be in receipt of one of those letters. I think the reply I'd send in would put me on the 'Warning! Risk!' register for several lifetimes.

The facts don't seem to bear out the need for this draconian approach either:

The rules were introduced after pupils carried out a survey of lunchboxes at the school after national research published by the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health showed that 99 out of 100 packed lunches eaten at school are unhealthy.

Although the school did better than the national average – with more than half of lunches including fresh fruit and vegetables compared to just one in ten nationally – one in five packed lunches contained sweets, savoury snacks and sugary drinks.

So, Whitehawk was actually a good example? Bearing in mind the nonsensical nature of having surveys of this sort in the first place, they were still better than the average school.

You'd think that would be cause for celebration, wouldn't you?

God knows, the educational achievements aren't much to shout about, not the high percentage of 'disadvantaged' pupils.

But no, it was clearly a 'could do better' for the NuPuritans. How dare some parents sen their children to school with an unnaproved savory snack? Or, god forbid, a sweet?

While all schools must provide healthy school dinners, Whitehawk is believed to be the first in Sussex to ban chocolate from lunchboxes.

But you can just bet your bottom dollar that it won't be the last.

Every petty authoritarian control-freak nanny-statist in the land probably had a massive, shuddering orgasm reading that news article...

The school’s assistant headteacher, Annie Noble (Ed: !!!), who is the healthy schools co-ordinator, said: “We are trying to help with the children’s learning.”

Clearly, you aren't. All you are teaching them is that what you put in your mouth is more important that what you put in your head to the school.

Miss Noble said: “It is all about a balanced diet. Nobody minds if there is a balance between fruit, vegetables, carbohydrates and protein.

“The understanding is there, but in practise it is very difficult not to include surgery things in packed lunches. It is about helping the children and parents to make the right choices. Sometimes it is easy and sometimes it is difficult.”

She seems to think she has a mandate to teach the parents as much as to teach the children, doesn't she?

A spokesman for the School Food Trust, an independent body which aims to transform school food, said: “Trying to bring packed lunches in line with healthy school dinners is a good step and as long as it is done sensitively it seems like the right thing for the school to do. Hopefully the parents will get behind it.”

And if they don't?