SCHOOL dinners in Furness have seen big changes in recent decades in keeping with economic and social trends for extended choice and greater competition.

Our selection of Mail archive pictures were taken in July 1990 at Abbotsmead School, Barrow.

This was a time of great transition, away from one set meal for everyone to a new era of cafeteria service and healthy options.

Go back to the 1970s and on offer was square-cut steak and kidney pie or cheese flan.

The school dinner service in Cumbria, as elsewhere, became a political football in the 1980s and 1990s and the themes of customer choice, privatisation and value for money left many school kitchens with a closure axe hanging over them.

Today a Cumbrian school dinner is in the £2.15 to £2.30 range.