This local initiative, developed in a small elementary school in a rural interior part of Portugal (Escola E.B.I. Diogo Bernardes), aims at the improvement of the centre’s organizatiion and quality. The project has helped to improve the access to the canteen and making the children's free time less stressing and more agreeable. With the new procedures, the children haven’t got to wait in endless queues to get into the canteen, being able to wait for their turn playing or dedicating their time learning.

Policy Context

This initiative was adopted following the analysis of the procedures made rule by the Portuguese Ministry of Education. Taking into account the results of this analysis we were able to put into practice a new and innovative procedure, which has since been applied in different schools that have adopted the same or similar systems.

Description of target users and groups

The school's 700 students, between 6 - 16 years old, of the Escola E.B.I. Diogo Bernardes - Ponte da Barca (Portugal).

Description of the way to implement the initiative

How we work: in the beginning of every school year and taking into account the classes’ timetables, we proceed to survey the number of students (per week day) who pretend to make use of the school's canteen. Through this survey we plan the average number of meals needed to be made each day of the week and we schedule a map with their position (each day of the week) to enter into the canteen. The access is made by calling out the class entering the canteen through the school's inner loud-speakers system. Periodically an evaluation of all these procedures is made and the necessary readjustments are made

Technology solution

The model here implemented uses the new technologies in making the process more efficient and swifter by registering the users and monotoring the results. The new technologies have a main role in the development of the whole procedures and in the continuous evaluation of the project itself. The future use of magnetic cards will enable better and swifter procedures, cutting time in the payment process as well as not making children (especially the younger ones) to carry money (many times lost during breaks).

Main results, benefits and impacts

Our analysis of the procedure to access to the school’s canteen and its implications led us to the conclusion that the students spent too much of their precious time in endless queues, thus originating conflicts that, many times, were brought into the classroom. Another negative aspect was that their break time was spent queuing and not interacting, thus increasing the stress and the tension among students. Before the implementation of this project, every student had to spend every day a lot of time in endless queues just to buy the tickets to eat in the canteen the following day. This process forced the school to have a permanent space where the tickets were sold to the students and also to the permanent occupation of a member of the staff who sold these items. Besides this, there was a permanent need of making and reproducing the tickets which led to an enormous waste of paper. Considering it to be too heavy, few or nothing at all productive and above all, too stressful for the children, the school decided to change the procedure: firstly, we estimated the number of students using the canteen, and secondly we suppressed the pre-payment of the tickets (leading to the suppression of the need of a permanent employee, space, and of course of the tickets/papers themselves). The access to the canteen is now controlled with the help of a simple ICT system. Every class knows in advance the moment (before and after which other class) its pupils are going to have their meals. A few minutes before reaching the moment to enter the canteen, the pupils are called through the school's inner loud-speakers system. In this initiative there are organizational and financial issues, pro-active conflict management as well as pedagogical issues. Another fact not yet stressed is the importance to acknowledge that the changes we put into action have led to major effects in the children's food habits. Many times students didn't want to eat in the canteen due to the fact that they had to spend their precious time queuing, and so they simply ate sandwiches. By changing the procedures, children began to have their meals more frequently in the canteen, making full meals which lead to the acquisition of better and healthier feeding habits. Innovation: Even not being extraordinary, this project is overwhelmingly important in the school's life as well as in the children's health - it is a hymn to the increased worth of the functional schemes that reduce the stress and the tension of our everyday life. Children/ students are able to do what they are supposed to do: socialize, interact with their colleagues, teachers and members of the school's staff and, more important, learn in an environment free from everyday stress and tensions.

Return on investment

Return on investment: Not applicable / Not available

Track record of sharing

The diffusion of the practice we developed led to the adoption of this system (or similar) in other schools in Portugal.

Lessons learnt

Lesson 1 - it is possible to build a more agreeable school through the suppression of situations that lead to the stress of the children. Lesson 2 - it is possible to create functional models that overcome the control mechanisms imposed by the administrative bureaucracy and that are equally succesful. Lesson 3 - it is possible to obtain the same or better results with fewer expenses. Scope: Local (city or municipality)