Efforts to improve school dinners are doomed to fail unless more money is spent on ingredients, one of the country’s leading chefs says.

Raymond Blanc, of Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons in Oxfordshire, said yesterday that the average of 70p per day spent on ingredients for each school meal was shockingly low and should be increased to at least £1.30 – and even £1.50 – to ensure that school cooks could buy nutritious food. “We have reduced the concept of school food to one of filling up little bodies with fast energy, which often means that children do not get nutritious foods,” he told The Times.

“It is all very well to buy an apple, but if it is not a good apple and it is covered in chemicals and residue, that is no good.” Food for school dinners should be produced locally, freshly prepared, seasonal and, where possible, organic, he said.

The amount of money spent on ingredients has increased substantially since Jamie Oliver’s television campaign three years ago exposed the Turkey Twizzler culture in school kitchens and found that local authorities were spending as little as 40p a day on ingredients. Now the average amount spent is 60p a day in primary schools and 74p in secondary schools.

Last year the Government allocated £220 million over three years and a further £240 million until 2011 to improve catering facilities and subsidise meals, but the catering industry says it comes to just an extra 10p per child per day. The Local Authority Caterers’ Association reported last year that two thirds of English councils were making a loss on school meals because take-up had fallen since the introduction of healthier menus.

Mr Blanc said that the answer was for the Government to provide greater subsidies for school food. Without this, he said, problems of childhood obesity and poor diet would never go away.

He was speaking at the opening of a new training network for school cooks. The 16 training centres in England will help dinner ladies to brush up their skills and learn to prepare nutritious meals from fresh ingredients. A recent survey found that fewer than 15 per cent of dinner ladies were educated to GCSE level.

The initiative forms part of the Government’s drive to improve school dinners after Oliver began his national campaign against junk food three years ago.

Mr Blanc said that dinner ladies needed training not just in how to prepare food without losing the nutrients but in how to promote it to children to encourage them to taste unfamiliar dishes.

Ed Balls, the Children’s Secretary, said: “School cooks are the heartbeat of our school food revolution, transforming lunches and children’s health. They deserve the best training.”

— Children had no time to play outside because they were stuck indoors studying for exams, the Scout Association claimed yesterday (Nicola Woolcock writes).

More than half a million children aged over seven never take part in open-air physical activities, according to a survey that it conducted. Children and their parents blamed the pressures of homework for the lack of outdoor exercise. However, most found time to spend at least half an hour a week watching television or playing on computers.

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