A survey of Bradford pupils has found that Muslim children want to eat English dishes for their school dinners while their non-Muslim classmates prefer curries.

School dinners bosses carried out

a consultation with parents and pupils to see how they could improve the

food being served up at canteens across the district.

The survey was carried out by Bradford Council's in-house schools caterer Education Contract Services (ECS) in Laisterdyke.

The feedback from parents and pupils has resulted in ECS scrapping processed and frozen food from its new menu in favour of fresh food from local producers from within 30 miles of the Bradford district.

And yesterday the Environment Minister Elliott Morley visited the ECS headquarters as part of a tour of projects which promote sustainability in West Yorkshire.

ECS is now planning to create focus groups with parents of Muslim children to increase the number of traditional English meals it can provide using halal meat.

ECS's business development manager Roger Sheard said: "We were astounded by some of the comments made by Muslim pupils. They told us they have more than enough choice of curries at home.

"In response we are conducting more focus groups with parental involvement looking at recipe development of Muslim children's favourite English and European-style dishes using halal meat for our Muslim customers."

The survey also found that non-Muslim children did want to see

more curry on the menu for their school dinners.

The Telegraph & Argus reported in July that the Council's in-house catering company had launched a new menu with local produce.

Now ECS's work has been praised by Mr Morley during his visit to Bradford.

He said: "The Government fully

supports moves to like this to encourage sustainable development and

we provided funding to Bradford Council for a study group to look at ways of how we can encourage local producers to become involved in school meals.

"At ECS we have food coming from local suppliers rather than from the other side of the world."

Mr Morley also praised the Meet the Buyer event staged by ECS earlier this year which allowed farmers, producers and distributors to meet to find ways of doing business to help provide fresh food for Bradford schools.