PROBABLY since the first school dinners were introduced in 1906, for children suffering from malnutrition, there have been complaints about their quality.

Who can forget the national scandal that Jamie Oliver created in 2005 with the infamous Turkey Twizzlers, which were only 34 per cent turkey and full of fat and sweeteners. His laudable campaign ensured that patties in school must contain 65 per cent meat and brought the importance of school dinners to the forefront.

The parental debate about the standard of food at Hummersknott Academy in Darlington has reminded us that the issue has not gone away.

Not only is school food important for obvious nutritional reasons but also because a child sitting in a classroom with an agonisingly empty stomach is not going to learn anything, no matter how brilliant the teacher is, so there are educational reasons as well.

Labour believes in the benefits of educating children with a full stomach and so, from 2028-29, has pledged to spend £315m-a-year on free breakfast clubs for all primary school children – it will be interesting to see how much of this spending survives Rachel Reeves’s first Budget later this month, and there is a genuine debate to be had about why pensioners’ fuel payments are means-tested yet children’s free breakfasts are universal.

But there won’t be much point in spending that taxpayers’ money if children are turning their noses up at their breakfasts.

Hummersknott is now committed to improving its food offering so the parental debate has had a positive impact.

School mealtimes are no longer the overlooked Cinderella of the school day, a bit of downtime between lessons when kids get to run around. Now they are an important part of the day with, as the number of children qualifying for free school meals continues to rise to almost a quarter, a wider social impact, so quality really does need to be uppermost.