The School Food Plan comprises sixteen actions designed to transform school food culture across the country. This week’s update looks at Actions 13/14, around Workforce Development.
There are over 60,000 people working in school food – a ‘workforce bigger than the navy’ – and they currently cater to 3.1 million children a day in diverse schools across the country.
This workforce is charged with a complex challenge and responsibility: to serve the nation’s children healthy meals that taste great and can compete with the high street, all on a tight budget in a short time each day.
The School Food Plan celebrates this workforce, while also recognizing that there is a need to develop a more structured approach to training and qualifications for school caterers. Furthermore, the school food workforce is often overlooked within schools, and seen by many as a ‘poor relation’ of the wider catering trade.
Over the past few months, a dedicated Workforce Development Group has been meeting regularly to develop an approach to address exactly these issues. Led by the Local Authority Catering Association (LACA), this public-private partnership brings together influential figures from across the sector, including People 1st, UNISON, the Academy of Culinary Arts, the Children’s Food Trust, and others.
Anne Bull from LACA is currently chairing the group. She explains:
“We have a very clear set of goals for the year ahead. First, we are creating a set of commonly-accepted professional standards for the sector. Second, we are mapping out existing training courses and identifying the best offerings for school cooks. Third, we are developing a strategy to promote training for school cooks more broadly, finding ways to encourage employers to invest in their frontline school cooks.”
Regarding the government’s new policy to introduce free school meals for all pupils in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 from September 2014, Anne Bull is emphatic that “universal free school meals only makes what we are doing with the Workforce Development Group all the more important and urgent.”
She argues that only with a well trained workforce can we ensure all pupils enjoy healthy and delicious school meals. As a result, a special sub-group has been tasked with looking specifically at the implications of universal free school meals on workforce training.
The next Workforce Development Group meeting is scheduled for January 2014.
Questions, comments, suggestions? We’d love to hear from you – just email info@schoolfoodplan.com
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