Jamie's chef scheme for schools

Jamie Oliver has been highly critical of school dinners

Jamie Oliver is promising to train hotel chefs to prepare healthy meals for delivery to rural schools.

The chef appeared at Lincoln Castle on Thursday and told a crowd of 2,000 he is working with county councils to improve school dinners.

Government cash will be used to train the chefs in the art of healthy meals.

The schools can then use food supplied by local hotels and restaurants - which is transported in a hotbox bought with the government cash.

Oliver said only three of 286 primary schools in Lincolnshire have a kitchen to supply hot meals to pupils.

I looked at that £1,200 and thought what on earth is a Lincolnshire school going to do with it Jamie Oliver

The second series of Jamie's School Dinners on Channel Four has been filmed in two Lincolnshire schools.

"A year ago we got £220m out of the British Government to help improve school meals. The result is that each school gets £1,200 plus 50p a kid," Oliver said.

"A year later I thought it was my duty to make another programme to see what has happened, what we have achieved and what we haven't achieved, and the result is that I found Lincolnshire."

Oliver said the fact that so many under-11s in Lincolnshire and 11 other counties are surviving on packed lunches led him to focus his attention on the demise of the school kitchens.

"I looked at that £1,200 and thought what on earth is a Lincolnshire school going to do with it, because £1,200 is not going to make much of a change," he said.

He said the solution is to use the £1,200, plus 50p per child, to train local chefs to cook school meals and ask local farmers to provide the ingredients.

Chefs will be trained by a county council nutritionist and local farmers are supplying cheap, fresh produce, he said.