The Croydon Model

Background
Croydon Council has over 120 schools, served by both external catering providers and schools with delegated authority. Half of secondary schools and four primary schools use cashless catering systems. This developed out of a need for reform:

• Workforce Reform – need to reduce amount of administration time for school meals
• Corporate Reform – to reduce youth crime, bullying, anti-social behaviour, petty theft
• Health & Wellbeing – to have school meal data to feed into obesity reduction and other children’s health related strategies

What did you do?
A ‘Data Warehousing Project’ was set up – through the installation of a central control and central reporting system. This is a major 12 month programme, which is still in the roll-out phase with 4 new schools per week. A high level evaluation of the project is underway with a completion target of September 2008.

What system do you use?
In secondary schools a mixture of biometric, photo recognition biometric fingerprints or cards is used. In primary schools, the system is Touch Screen photo identification. The
schools had a choice based on suitability to their particular needs. Secondary Schools made a contribution to overall costs of hardware.

Why did you choose it?
A market leader supplier was chosen because of prior experience with them and because they were willing to work with the authority to help develop a new system unlike any in existence. A company was required that could be trusted to deliver to the authority’s specifications. – Nationwide Retail Systems Ltd were awarded the contract.

Benefits

• Data Collection The central control and central reporting system permits a large amount of data to be collected. By 2pm every day, details can be extracted how many meals are being sold/served across the borough. This can be broken down school by school and also down to an individual to look at eating patterns. Menus can be checked to see if they are meeting school food standards. This information can be forwarded to the PCT and Healthy Schools so that they can feed this into their overall strategies for Croydon and for individual schools. The data can be analysed so that support for schools and for children is better targeted.
• FSM An increase of over 5% in uptake has been achieved; it is now over 50%. There is complete anonymity with regard to FSM uptake. The percentage of FSM uptake and money allocated to FSM which hasn’t been taken up can be calculated.
• Cash Prior to Central Control System, all cash was held in school bank account – now all cash comes into a centrally held account. A fully on-line Parent Pay system is in place. All bank statements are dealt with and reconciled centrally. Debtors are picked up and parents contacted more efficiently and quickly; a parent letter is in the software.
• Monitoring It is possible to see exactly what is going on in the borough around school meal provision irrespective of who is providing the catering.

Challenges

• PayPoint cards have to be paid for – they are £1.50 per card. However, if parents pay on-line no card is needed.
• Transaction charges are set at twenty five pence per transaction; to avoid schools having to pay these, the centrally accrued interest is used to offset the charges.
• School Administration. Some negative responses were received from school administration staff who feared that they might lose their jobs if they lost the control they had over school meal administration to central control. Effective communications with Head Teachers and governors was essential to overcome the negativity.
• Training. Catering staff needed additional training. The ambitious plan – 4 new schools per week – meant that this had to be thought through in advance. School administration staff also had to be trained.
• Service is a little bit slower on the changeover days but it does not impinge on the school timetable.

Advice to others

• The key to this process is partnership – from the outset establish a high level project board – a collective of expertise from across council departments and partners. During the roll-out phase ensure regular planning meetings are held
• It has been a massive learning experience. The system as it stands, while designed to meet Croydon’s needs and, having been externally audited, should meet the needs of other education establishments.
• It is also crucial that during the planning/setting up you have a practical operations person who goes to the schools looking for best position for POS tills.