Boarding School pupils prefer "Take Away" meals and fast foods, to school-cooked foods, according to domestic bursars in the country's boarding schools. The craze for fast food by children is said to be fuelled by parents, who visit their children in boarding schools with such foods, making it difficult to feed pupils with meals prepared by the schools. Josephine Yan-Ess, President of the National Association of Bursars and Matrons (NADBAM), made this observation at the 2nd Biennial Delegates Conference of the association at Koforidua under the theme: "The Challenges Confronting Institutional Feeding with New Education Reform." She said pupils have become so addicted to fast food brought by their parents that they shun food served at school dinning halls. Mrs Yan-Ess, however, stressed the need to strengthen the catering departments of schools by improving conditions under which some of them prepare and serve food to the students to meet the minimum standards for catering services. She complained that many infrastructural developments take place in the schools without the authorities thinking of the catering department which is the most important part of any boarding school. "The fast growing adolescents need food that is adequate and nutritious and served under hygienic conditions to keep the students healthy, alert and able to study. "Projects undertaken by the GES are mainly for classrooms and other academic areas but the catering department is almost always left out of the scheme.” She also said that adequate supplies of catering equipment and utensils, lack of storage facilities and potable in some of the schools made catering-services very difficult for the domestic bursars. The Deputy Eastern Regional Minister, Ofosu Asamoah, who was the guest speaker, said the scope of second cycle education under the new education reforms, is going to be broadened with the possibility of more mouths to be fed. He, therefore, appealed to the domestic bursars to use the conference to find suitable answers to the many questions which would be arising in such situations. He also praised them for adopting a unified weekly menu for students in the boarding houses to avoid comparing of meals they have been served with what is served in other schools. He expressed the hope that school authorities in collaboration with the domestic bursars would abide by new procurement laws in the school system. The occasion was used to launch the association's maiden "Chickadee" magazine. Source: Times