FOR two years a mother has travelled to her children's school every lunchtime to feed them.

Ester Lyndley took action after King David's School in Crumpsall banned all packed lunches.

But now she is celebrating after government officials ruled that the school must allow pupils to bring in home-cooked food.

The Jewish infant, junior and secondary schools, which share the same site, banned packed lunches because of fears that non-kosher food would be brought into the dining room.

Officials at the Department for Education and Skills say governors are breaking national guidelines and have ordered a U-turn or they will impose a legal order forcing them to lift the ban.

Their intervention follows Ester's prolonged battle to allow her children, seven-year-old Joseph and Chanel, nine, to eat home-made food.

The mum, who for the last two years has fed them in her car or the local park at lunchtimes, says she wants to give them homemade meals because school canteen food was unhealthy and her son was allergic to certain foods.

She said: "Only Jewish children go to the school. Their parents are obviously only going to give them kosher food to take into school. At the moment it is a monopoly for the school.

"The food they serve in the canteen may be kosher but it is not healthy. They sell sausages and chips and there is no fruit or vegetables - I want to be able to send them in with healthy food that is kosher but doesn't have salt or fat in it.

"The school only say they will allow packaged sandwiches which are authorised as kosher but these are expensive to buy and when you read the labels they are just as unhealthy as the canteen food."

Frightened

She claims other parents are also concerned about the ban but were too frightened to speak out.

Department officials say Jewish schools in other parts of the country allow packed lunches, some offering separate dining tables or sometimes separate rooms for children bringing food from home.

They also said the rules at King David's appeared to be contradictory because staff were allowed to bring their own food into the premises and non-kosher food was served in the school's coffee shop.

School bosses said they allow pupils to bring shop-bought kosher sandwiches but other foods could not be guaranteed kosher. They also claimed the cost of setting up a separate dining area for children with home food would be prohibitive

But in a letter to the school, an official from the DFES' school food team states: "There would appear to be grounds for saying that the policy of not allowing home-made kosher packed lunches may be unreasonable. It would also be not just unreasonable but illegal in the department's view to charge for the cost of providing facilities for children to eat such packed lunches in school."

Government officials said children with lunches and dinners should be able to share the same dining room, threatening that a control order would be imposed unless the policy changed.

The secondary has some of the top grades in the country and has consistently returned the best exam results for state schools in Manchester.

Correspondence

Suzanne Simon, the school's chair of governors, said: "We are still in correspondence with the department for education about this and do not feel it is appropriate to discuss it until the matter has been decided. Our policy is still in place at the moment."

The mum has previously challenged the school over its collection of voluntary donations. Three years' ago she won a ruling against the school, barring it from sending parents annual invoices for £1,200.

Her solicitor James Wilson, from specialist education firm Ridley and Hall, said: "You can tell from the timetable that the education department has imposed that they are taking this matter very seriously.

"There is a legal duty to comply with decisions issued by the department and it is hoped that the school will comply voluntarily."

The voluntary aided schools, which between them have 1,300 pupils, have their own fundraising powers and operates at arms length from Manchester City Council.

The council confirmed they had been in discussions with Mrs Lyndley and the school but refused to comment further.

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