This looking pretty promising! Thanks for sharing!
I think we brought this change happening forward by 2-6 years (the counterfactual of when it would have happened otherwise).
What was this based on? Is this assuming no other groups would run a similar campaign, or if they would have, since you ran this campaign, they’d do something else similarly impactful instead, e.g. meatless days at different institutions, or other institutional or corporate asks?
It seems like the schools most receptive and eager to run such programs would also be most likely to do it on their own without the push.
Also, it seems like you’re modelling none of these schools as quitting these programs over that period. Some schools might have poor rollouts and then quit early (and making sure things go smoothly could be worth the extra work!), but I’d guess if a school makes it a few months without too many problems (e.g. lots of complaints, costs, logistical issues), it would be unlikely to quit before a full year passes, since they wouldn’t go out of their way to revisit it again soon after the first evaluation at the end of a “trial period”, but they might revisit school lunch programs regularly on a schedule, e.g. yearly, and then it might get cut when that happens. This is just speculation by me; I don’t know how it works in schools, let alone schools in the UK.
It’s predominately based on when I think ProVeg would have had capacity to work with Hackney and get this change moving. Like I’ve mentioned above, they only have one person working on the School Plates campaign and things generally take on the order of 12-18 months from initial contact to implementation. Most councils (90%+) don’t reply to ProVeg’s outreach emails so I can’t imagine Hackney being particularly different over the next 1-2 years.
The much smaller probability is that either a very proactive councillor or very proactive citizen wanted to push this through but I think it would have been unlikely. It would be unlikely for the councillor to instigate such a thing in my opinion as councillors are generally extremely busy and not willing to go out on a limb on a politically risky move (as I think this is) without some external pressure. Also that most councillors aren’t that motivated by animals or climate reasons. I don’t think a citizen would have instigated this change as councils are actually quite complex to get your head around and most people don’t even know how to go about this. Even with providing people with lots of information, people struggle to know the best people to contact and how to pitch an idea so I’m doubtful it would have happened organically this way for the next few years at least.
Regarding the drop-out rate, that’s a good point. Although I’m fairly confident that individual schools themselves can’t drop out, as all the catering/food is provided by the council so I think it’s an all or nothing situation. Obviously the nothing situation would be extremely bad but I think a whole council quitting is quite unlikely (but not impossible).
This looking pretty promising! Thanks for sharing!
What was this based on? Is this assuming no other groups would run a similar campaign, or if they would have, since you ran this campaign, they’d do something else similarly impactful instead, e.g. meatless days at different institutions, or other institutional or corporate asks?
It seems like the schools most receptive and eager to run such programs would also be most likely to do it on their own without the push.
Also, it seems like you’re modelling none of these schools as quitting these programs over that period. Some schools might have poor rollouts and then quit early (and making sure things go smoothly could be worth the extra work!), but I’d guess if a school makes it a few months without too many problems (e.g. lots of complaints, costs, logistical issues), it would be unlikely to quit before a full year passes, since they wouldn’t go out of their way to revisit it again soon after the first evaluation at the end of a “trial period”, but they might revisit school lunch programs regularly on a schedule, e.g. yearly, and then it might get cut when that happens. This is just speculation by me; I don’t know how it works in schools, let alone schools in the UK.
It’s predominately based on when I think ProVeg would have had capacity to work with Hackney and get this change moving. Like I’ve mentioned above, they only have one person working on the School Plates campaign and things generally take on the order of 12-18 months from initial contact to implementation. Most councils (90%+) don’t reply to ProVeg’s outreach emails so I can’t imagine Hackney being particularly different over the next 1-2 years.
The much smaller probability is that either a very proactive councillor or very proactive citizen wanted to push this through but I think it would have been unlikely. It would be unlikely for the councillor to instigate such a thing in my opinion as councillors are generally extremely busy and not willing to go out on a limb on a politically risky move (as I think this is) without some external pressure. Also that most councillors aren’t that motivated by animals or climate reasons. I don’t think a citizen would have instigated this change as councils are actually quite complex to get your head around and most people don’t even know how to go about this. Even with providing people with lots of information, people struggle to know the best people to contact and how to pitch an idea so I’m doubtful it would have happened organically this way for the next few years at least.
Regarding the drop-out rate, that’s a good point. Although I’m fairly confident that individual schools themselves can’t drop out, as all the catering/food is provided by the council so I think it’s an all or nothing situation. Obviously the nothing situation would be extremely bad but I think a whole council quitting is quite unlikely (but not impossible).