Are the best school dinners served in St Neots?

DINNER TIME: Crosshall Infant School in Eaton Ford has reached the final in the best school dinners category of a national competition.

The Times Education Supplement is running the awards for the first time this year to reward the teams that make an outstanding contribution to primary and secondary education. The winners will be announced at a ceremony in London on June 9.

Crosshall cooks all its food in-house and cater for 320 of their 350 pupils.

Kitchen manager, Joanne Owen, regularly reviews the menu to ensure it's healthy and parents are invited to eat with their children.

"We try to locally source our foods," she said. "We provide home-cooked meals and we give the children a large choice of salads and vegetables and encourage them to eat these foods.

"We serve things like spaghetti bolognaise, home made pizza, jacket potatoes, home made bread and they always have two choices of fresh vegetables."

Joanne joined Crosshall three years ago following a career catering in hotels and restaurants. Due to Government initiatives and her personal passion for cooking, the menu at Crosshall has improved over the years.

Vanessa Parker, school spokesman, added: "We are extremely lucky to have such a committed kitchen manager as Joanne Owen and we hope that she will pick up the award in June.

"It is much deserved as she and her team put in a tremendous amount of effort to produce healthy and nutritious school dinners in-house for the children, staff and parent visitors every day."

Joanne said the key to the school's success was finding out what the children enjoy but within that, keeping it healthy.

"I also have a really good, hard working team. Without that it wouldn't be successful."

Which school serves the best school dinners? Send your views to editor@huntspost.co.uk