Think back to your secondary school days. How do you remember lunchtime? An hour for lunch? Computer club? Chess club? Netball? Kicking a ball around with mates? What about the canteen? Were you sliding a tray along while people slopped stuff on to the plate? Or were you eating a packed lunch?

However you recall your lunchtimes, some things have changed a lot. Now, with lunch breaks frequently lasting only 30 to 40 minutes, for many students it's about necking the food as quickly as possible so you can still socialise with your mates. It promotes a grab'n'go food culture and an awful lot of litter.

What hasn't changed much is the canteen, either its infrastructure, or the service, perhaps for the best part of 20 years. They're not always appetising places to eat, so it's hardly surprising that teenagers are reluctant to spend time there. The alternative for parents is packed lunches, but with food prices rising, this is one area where we might be tempted to cut corners to save pounds and time. Together these factors are sounding the death knell for secondary school dinners.

In July, at the Local Authority Caterers' Association (LACA) conference, the School Food Trust (SFT) announced its latest figures for school dinner uptake. On the one hand, the numbers eating primary school dinners have increased by 2.3 per cent - 88,000 more meals served daily than last year - the first time an increase has been recorded since the Government got behind Jamie Oliver's campaign to make school dinners healthier.

This week primary school meals were given a further boost with the announcement of a pilot scheme that will offer pupils in two deprived areas of England free school meals, while in a third area means-testing for free meals will change so that more pupils qualify. The Department of Health and the Department for Children, Schools and Families have allocated £20 million over the next two years for the trial, and local authorities are being invited to apply for the right to take part. Announcing the initiative, the Secretary of State for Children, Ed Balls, said: “These trials will show whether making the lunches free in primary schools does improve behaviour, results and healthy eating at home.”

Secondary pupils are snubbing school meals

Good news for primary schools then, but there's still a long way to go in secondary schools, where the uptake of meals has continued its four-year decline and now stands at its lowest level, with 37 per cent of students eating them. With this in mind the Food for Life partnership of schools and communities sent an open letter to Balls stating that without significant further investment, the school meals system could collapse within three years. It's a shocking statement. But what if the worst were to happen? What would our kids be eating if school catering disappeared? And is it possible to turn things around?

With startling prescience, a week after the Balls letter, Jack Winkler, the director of the Nutrition Policy Unit at London Metropolitan University, published a report that gave an insight into what we might expect if secondary school students were left to fend for themselves at lunchtime. His team observed 322 students from two schools; the results led Kevin Brennan, the Children's Minister, to call for head teachers to lock their children inside school premises during lunch breaks.

Professor Winkler found that 80 per cent of the children were buying lunch from local shops and takeaways at least once a week. The food was also worryingly high in fat and sugar, with an average of 28g of sugar (seven teaspoons) per purchase. He also found that 43 per cent of pupils never visited their school canteen and of those that did only 6 per cent ate the hot meals that were offered. Local takeaways also undercut the canteens; while a slice of pizza could be bought in school for £1.30, a local takeaway was offering a whole pizza for £1.

These results are not news to Carina Norris, a registered nutritionist who studied the eating habits of secondary school children for her MSc. She found that instead of buying proper dinners, children tended to eat mealsize portions of snack foods and buy two-litre bottles of soft drinks to share with friends or consume alone. “If they're eating this every day, their mood, behaviour and concentration will all be affected,” says Norris. “Low-grade iron deficiencies affect performance. Plus their immune systems are lower, meaning that they miss school.”

Norris says that “time-pressed parents should delegate responsibility for lunch to their children's school, so that they don't have to worry about what their children eat during the day”.

Mandy Grimwood, a mother of two teenage boys at a secondary school in north Essex, agrees. She says that school dinners cost about £2 per day while the packed lunches that she prepares - containing meat-filled rolls, veggies, a drink, a piece of fruit and a chocolate bar - cost about £3, rising to £4 if she includes more complicated items. “To be honest, it would save me time and money if they ate at the school. By the time I've included different fruits and vegetables every day for two packed lunches, it adds up,” she says.

So why don't her sons, Adam and Ben, like to eat at school? “I used to eat the lunches,” says Adam, 15, “but I liked the salads and they changed it. They don't have the variety they used to. And the canteen is dull. They need to make it more welcoming.”

“My mates all have packed lunches,” says Ben, 12. “I prefer them because mum knows what you like, and the new things you can try as well.”

“And there's always big queues,” Adam adds.

When it comes to the question of what's putting students off their canteens, surprisingly food is not the number one complaint - it's the queues. Research for the SFT last year found that 49 per cent of students have a lunch break shorter than 45 minutes. With time at a premium, teenagers don't want to spend more than half the break standing in a queue before they get to eat their lunch. Neil Porter, chair of the LACA, says: “If you're serving 1,000 pupils you will have queues. Staggered lunch breaks have had a positive impact... but if the school has an off-site policy at lunchtime and kids have money in their pocket, they're going to go elsewhere.”

Earlier this year the University of Hull published a report into the impact of the local Eat Well Do Well scheme that provided free breakfasts, school meals and after-school snacks to all primary and special school children for three years. Researchers reported that some children had been drinking fizzy drinks for breakfast and in some cases were going to bed hungry. However, the introduction of healthier meals during the day was dramatic, both in terms of nutrition and improved behaviour.

“It has to be a five-pronged attack,” says Prue Leith, chair of the SFT. “Investment from the Government, fix dining rooms, training for cooks, get the teachers and the parents engaged, and educate the children in food - both cooking and nutrition.” Leith and Porter would like to see a change in the curriculum away from “food tech” which tends to teach marketing and packaging, and back to traditional cookery lessons where children can grow their own food, learn about sourcing, sustainability, and as Leith puts it, “the pleasure of cooking for people, sitting down with them, and talking”. The recent initiative to introduce compulsory cookery classes for all 11-14 year olds by 2011 goes some way to addressing that.

Leith also acknowledges the challenge of food costs, but adds: “There is some comfort in that what constitutes the healthiest food for children is also the cheapest,” she says. The Compass Group, which owns Scolarest, the largest provider of schools catering, says that for now it has managed to head off most of the price increases by driving hard bargains with suppliers, but it concedes this will be harder for smaller caterers.

Despite the difficulties, the SFT refuses to give up on secondary schools by simply waiting for the primary kids to bring their eating habits with them when they move up. It admits there is a mountain to climb, but believes that more schools are showing a willingness to change. “It will take more than a couple of years,” says Leith, “and it does require everyone to work together, but for our future we can't afford not to.”

Sweet taste of success

One secondary school head who is committed to getting students to eat healthily is Ann Bowen at the Roseberry Sports and Community College, Co Durham.

The college is often used as an example of how - when everyone pulls together - it can make a difference; in four years meal uptake has almost doubled from 265 to 455 meals daily. To achieve this the school, which has 700 pupils, took out a £500,000 loan to completely renovate the dining area, giving it a café feel. It also brought the catering back in house and switched to a cashless fingerprint-based system that has removed queues.

The catering staff use local suppliers and organic produce where possible, and free-range eggs. Dishes in the canteen include pasta bake, curry with wholegrain rice and chilli con carne. There is also a fruit tuck shop and vending machines containing healthy snacks.

The results from all this effort have been dramatic. Exclusions and behaviour notices have more than halved from 55 to 22 incidents, attendance has increased from 88 per cent to almost 93 per cent, and the number of pupils achieving 5 A* to C grades has risen from 30 per cent to 54 per cent in the four years to 2007. Of the 20 per cent of pupils entitled to free school meals, uptake has jumped from 55 per cent to 85 per cent, probably because the biometric payment system, which everyone uses, has de-stigmatised free meals.

Bowen says that a range of strategies contributed to the improvements but is convinced that the changes to catering “had a large part to play”.

Times recommends

• Jennifer Aniston, time to be a real bitch
• It may be hard to say so, but conversation is back
• News Review interview: Georgina Baillie