The IndependentSchool Food Plan

Getting parents involved: Barons Court Primary School

Getting parents involved has huge benefits for all schools, especially small ones like Barons Court Primary school in Southend. We have only 186 pupils. Until two years ago, we had no food service of our own, meals were delivered from another, larger primary school.

When we decided to open our own kitchen, we knew we would have to rely heavily on parents and other community members to help out. We now have our own chef, but volunteers and governors help with food preparation every day. For example, one of our mums makes bread, and there is a governor who peels the potatoes on roast day. To make it easier to tap into the particular skills of volunteers, we use a four-week menu of simple dishes, advertised well in advance in our school newsletter and on our website.

Our food is wholesome and tasty- it won the Food for Life Partnership’s bronze award recently – and our Orchard Bistro is a lovely place to be. Parents are welcome to join their children for lunch any day of the week. As our cook Liz says: “we like to have adults in the hall, the aim was always to have a family-style dining experience.”

Farming in schools: Phoenix High School

Phoenix High School is very far from a rural idyll. Located right in the middle of the socially deprived White City Estate in west London, with the six lane A40 roaring in the background, our school is perhaps the last place on earth you would expect to find a farm.

Yet here, in a large plot behind the sixth form block, are carrots, leeks, onions and herbs growing in neatly-tended vegetable beds. We have greenhouses and abundant fruit trees, as well as rabbit hutches, a hen coop and a colony of bees.

Our farm was the brainchild of Sir William Atkinson, the executive head teacher. He wanted to give the children something that very few were getting at home: an intimate understanding of nature.

Phoenix’s 1,100 children mostly come from disadvantaged backgrounds: 60% receive free school meals, 65% speak English as a second language and 65% have special needs. “Many of our children live in very cramped flats,” says Sir William. “To some, vegetables come in plastic bags from the supermarket, not out of the ground.”

Working on the school farm – planting, weeding, harvesting, caring for the animals – gives our pupils a uniquely hands-on education. They learn about seasonality, the life-cycle of plants and where food really comes from. For those who want to it further, we have introduced a City and Guilds qualification in Landbased Studies (horticulture and animal care).

Some of our produce in used in school meals, much to the children’s excitement, and we run a pop-up fruit and vegetable stall three times a week, selling to the public.

Even so, our farm is expensive to run. We employ two full-time gardeners, as well as a small army of community volunteers. It costs around £70,000 a year to keep the venture going, money that comes from the Big Lottery Fund. But the benefits to Phoenix High, its pupils and the wider community have been worth every penny.

Demanding more from existing caterers: Ashley Church of England Primary School

The food at our school, Ashley C of E Primary School in Walton-on-Thames, used to be pretty uninspiring. It was brought in pre-cooked by council caterers and dished up into plastic flight trays at a small serving hatch. Unsurprisingly, take-up had sunk to a miserable 27%.

But when our head teacher Richard Dunne told our cooks that he wanted to overhaul the lunch service, they rose to the occasion. “As heads, we should have the confidence to say to the local authority: ‘this is OK, but it could be better’,” says Richard. “At the end of the day, they want our business and a high take-up of school meals.”

Together, we resolved to start serving high quality, seasonal food. For six months our pupils were obliged to make do with packed lunches while a new kitchen was built so that the food could be cooked from scratch on site. Parents agreed to a rise of 10p (to £2.10) to fund fresh, seasonal fruit and vegetables and high welfare, organic meat. The children were involved in shaping every aspect of the lunchtime experience, right down to choosing the right kind of cutlery.

Take-up now stands at a fantastic 70%. Lunch is just one part of our strong, curriculum-wide approach to food, which incorporates our vegetable plot and fruit tree orchards. Everyone is involved. Our Year 1 children learn about and plant wild flowers. Year 2 keep bees, while Year 3 become experts in fruit trees and local varieties of fruit. Year 4 look after the soft fruit, Year 5 raise the salads and Year 6 are in charge of the vegetables. And because our school kitchen uses the children’s produce, they are always excited about eating it.

Cutting queues: Glasgow secondary schools