SCHOOL dinners could become a thing of the past - because the Government has failed to support changes demanded by Jamie Oliver.

Pupils have rejected the healthy hot meals inspired by the naked chef and are choosing fattening junk food instead.

School dinner halls were "like restaurants with no customers", meal service provider the Local Authority Caterers Association (LACA) warned.

In a letter to Education Secretary Ed Balls, LACA said soaring food costs had contributed to the problem.

And it warned the school meals service was nearing collapse.

"The majority of school meal providers are now running at a deficit which they will not be able to sustain," the letter said.

"The Government has acted on the changes Jamie Oliver recommended but it has not provided sufficient support to make it work," LACA vice chairman Neil Porter said.

"He made them recognise how under-funded the school meals service was and the Government provided money over a three year period to make improvements - but nowhere near enough.

"And until the school-meal culture changes within the schools the problem will remain.

"Kids don't like the new healthy hot meals and they are voting with their feet."

LACA argued that only a massive injection of money and a change in the law could save the school meals service.

"Pupils should not have the choice to go outside at lunchtime and spend their money outside the school," Mr Porter said.

"Otherwise the changes that are being made will not work. At the moment school dinner halls are like restaurants with no customers. More emphasis has been placed on better nutritional standards but the pupils do not like it.

"In order to maintain and achieve what we are trying to do with the school meals service we have got to reduce the choice available to them."

The letter to Mr Balls made six recommendations to save school dinners.

It recommended that by 2017 each pupil should eat a healthy and 'climate friendly' meal once a day, that a set period of time should be put aside for the meal so that it was a part of the curriculum, and that a minimum of £1 should be spent per pupil per school on each meal.

School kitchen workers should be paid to work sufficient hours to prepare food from fresh ingredients, each pupil should by the age of 14 receive 12 hours a year of cookery lessons, and they should also be given direct experience of food growing and production.

It said the full package of improvements would cost £291 million a year.

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