ABSTRACT
All children in Italy receive free, compulsory schooling and have all the rights to school and community education services, including school meals, according to constitutionally founded basic educational principles. To operate a school meals service, the municipal authorities must set up a School Meals Joint Committee (SMJC) composed of the Councillor for Education (CEd), pupil-parent representatives, teachers and a council expert. Mapping the experience of the SMJC set up in Abbiategrasso, a town in the Metropolitan City of Milan, Lombardy, northern Italy, identifies some interconnected drivers of co-production in a basic school and community education service. Hence, the SMJC has become a major enabling force in the school meals monitoring operations, allowing the council to take on education-related challenges that were previously beyond its limited capabilities. The involvement of the SMJC members in the diverse stages of the decision-making process has created a new institutional arena in which the actors play a central role in shaping the school meals service.
