The Basque Government shields the service of catering companies in school canteens
- In 2019 the Basque Parliament approved a new model for schools that want to act without catering companies. Instead, the Basque Government has recently issued an order requiring the centres to provide a service through catering companies. Meanwhile, the 50 schools that have asked for the kitchen to be installed in the center itself are still waiting.
According to the regulations of the year 2000, the centres of the public network must work with catering companies, but since 2016 they have already started a pilot project in four public centres based on another dining model and in 2019 Parliament agreed “to channel the opportunities for centres that opt for innovative and decentralised management”. In addition, in recent years there has been an increase in the number of centres that want to work in the local kitchen with food and local suppliers.
On the contrary, as established by the new regulations of the Basque Government, “sectoral companies will be hired to provide a dining room service” and EHIGE denounces that the loopholes opened by the regulations of the year 2000: direct hiring through the center and management through authorized entities have been closed.
"Fooled."
“We feel fooled,” says EHIGE. We believe in the educational function of the dining room and we are committed to the quality of food related to the environment and sustainability. That’s why we are against this new order that goes in the opposite direction, and we ask the Department of Education to respond to the demands of families.”
EH Secretary of Education Bildu, Ikoitz Arrese, has brought the issue to Parliament and criticized that this order has taken a step backwards in regulating school canteens, “in the year 2000. Because at least the order of the year left the door open, through the pilot projects we have seen, to provide an unfair complementary service to companies, much more local, more ecological and that could contribute to the eco-social transition, but with this order, or the company cooked it, or you have to cook the food that the company carries.”
"We are committed to the quality of food linked to the environment and sustainability. We ask the Department of Education to respond to the demands of families."
Kitchens in school, when?
On the other hand, Ikoitz Arrese has recalled that there are 50 centers that have requested kitchen in the center itself and that are still waiting, “that they do not know when the works will start, what budget they will have, whether they will put the kitchen or not… There are centers that when they were students who started Primary have asked for kitchen and are in Compulsory Secondary Education without seeing the kitchen”.
Arrese himself pointed out that the catering business model is an exhausted model: "The quality of the menus is getting worse and worse, management is becoming more and more unsustainable and the luce of companies is behind." There is also little news about families who are angry with the service of these companies.
In the Egonarria programme, they talked about the theme Lurdes Imaz and Eneko Viñuela, of the project Plot Platera Plot Aukera.
Euskal Herriko Ikasleen Gurasoen Elkarteak (EHIGE) artikulu honetan jakitera eman duenez, Eusko Jaurlaritzak EAEko ikastetxeetako jantokietarako argitaratu dituzten pleguak "caterin-enpresa handientzat pentsatutakoak dira". Alderdi pedagogikoan "ez dagoela... [+]