Only a quarter of pupils in Oxfordshire eat school dinners - a lower proportion than anywhere in England, despite the county spending more than most on ingredients.

A league table of school dinners produced by the Soil Association shows that while Oxfordshire spends 50p per primary pupil, only 26 per cent of pupils are choosing to eat school meals.

London City, which spends 40p per head, has the highest uptake of 80 per cent.

Of the 79 local education authorities which responded to the survey, more than three quarters spent less than 50p per child on ingredients.

On the same day as TV chef Jamie Oliver delivered a petition to Downing Street demanding better school food, Education Secretary Ruth Kelly yesterday announced a £280m package that would see 50p spent on every primary school meal and 60p on every secondary school meal.

But primary heads in Oxfordshire, where 50p a head is already spent, said more cash was needed to improve food and pay kitchen staff for the extra preparation time.

Fizzy drinks, sweets and chocolate are banned at West Oxford Community Primary School and parents are calling for less junk food on the dinner menu.

Headteacher Julie St Clair Hoare said the Government should invest some of the cash in cooks like Carol Gilders, who has worked at the school for 23 years.

She said: "Our staff already do unpaid overtime. If they are going to expect more preparation, obviously they have to increase the hours of kitchen staff.

"The county has taken steps to make school meals healthier but there are still improvements to be made.

"There are still some things like sugary desserts that parents have reservations about. We have healthy desserts too but children obviously go for the sugary option."

Oxford parent Frances Melvyn, 41, only allows her six-year-old daughter Sarah Jenkins to have school dinners once a week and said more parents would swap their child's lunch boxes for a canteen ticket if school food was healthier.

She said: "My daughter loves school dinners, it's the kind of food that children like, but it's not particularly healthy. The school cook is wonderful but the food she is given is not fresh.

"If the dinners were healthier I would let my daughter have them every day."

Annabel Dunstan, 38, whose daughter Megan, six, also takes school dinners one day a week, has helped organise healthy eating events for families at the school.

She said: "When you're trying to teach healthy eating at home and they go into school to be faced with an iced bun, it's quite difficult.

"I encourage my daughter to go for the vegetarian option because the quality of meat is fairly low.

"We are absolutely delighted that the Government is putting this money forward, but there's still a long way to go."

Keith Ponsford, headteacher of Cutteslowe Primary School in Oxford, where about half of pupils use the canteen, said: "We've tried all sorts of ways to get children to eat healthy food, with competitions, campaigns and curriculum work. We have encountered some of the problems associated with children's perceptions about food but we are making incremental improvement. We hope the extra funding boost will help."

Bayards Hill Primary School in Barton, Oxford, where about half the pupils take school meals, was one of the first to pilot CFM's healthier menu two years ago.

Headteacher Ronald Holland said: "Our cooks do vegetables instead of frozen food. The vegetables didn't go down brilliantly at the beginning, but that was because the children didn't know what they were eating. Now they are getting proper, healthy food."

Oxfordshire County Council said the Soil Association figures were misleading because they compared the uptake at schools which use its in-house catering service, County Facilities Management (CFM), with the total number of pupils.

But uptake at schools which use CFM remains low at 33 per cent in primary schools and 50 per cent in secondary schools.

Tony Crabbe, the council's executive member for schools, said the relatively low proportion of children on free school meals could be to blame for the low take-up.

The number of secondary pupils eligible is eight per cent, while at primary level it is 9.8 per cent. Nationally the figure is about 15 per cent.

He said: "If we are spending more per pupil it's surprising there isn't a higher uptake. The number of children who take school meals very often depends on the number of children entitled to free school meals."

Jackie Hayes, head of CFM, added: "There has already been a lot of work going on in Oxfordshire schools to introduce healthier meals.

"Last year a new menu was introduced including more homemade dishes, less processed items and increased amounts of fresh fruit and vegetables."