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 every day in schools across the country.
The authors of The School Food Plan recognised that the 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 and timescales each day.
A dedicated Workforce Development Group has been meeting regularly to develop an approach to address exactly these challenges. Led by the Leading Association for Catering in Education (LACA), the group consists of chefs, caterers, Unions, head teachers, campaigners and People 1st. The three main goals of the group are to:
- create a set of commonly-accepted professional standards for the sector
- map out existing training courses, programmes and qualifications and identify the best offerings for the school food workforce
- develop a strategy to promote training for the school food workforce more broadly and find ways to encourage employers to invest in their frontline school food workforce.
The group have appointed the hospitality skills sector body, People 1st to work with them on taking forward the first action to produce a draft of the professional standards. The professional standards are being developed for all staff who have a crucial role in delivering school food both back and front of house:
- Head of kitchen (Catering Manager / Head Chef)
- School Cook
- Assistant Cook
- General Kitchen / Catering Assistant
- Midday Supervisor
These standards are out for consultation with industry employers and other stakeholders during April (link to the consultation). The consultation asks the industry to consider whether the standards reflect the skills, knowledge and behaviours required of those delivering school food, and also how the standards could be used to best advantage in their own school catering operation. In May the group will be working directly with industry to try out and validate some of these uses to provide advice and guidance and spark ideas for others in the sector.
What are professional standards?
Professional standards are simple, they say exactly what employers agree are the ‘knowledge’, ‘skills’ and ‘behaviours’ that an individual needs in order to achieve the best industry standard of performance in their job role. This approach focuses on the output of what someone is expected to do rather than on the various qualifications and training that someone should achieve.
We want the new standards to be more visible and something for us all to aim for and aspire to. The standards are voluntary and will not replace in-house training, apprenticeships or qualifications, but will support training and development towards a consistent standard for the industry.
Importantly, the work is being funded by a wide range of organisations working in the school food sector:
- Chartwells
- Harrisons
- ISS World
- Hobart
- Pasta King
- Solihull MBC
- Premier Foods
- Brakes
- McCain
- NRS
- Bidvest 3663
- Elygra
- Unison
“We need professional standards so all staff can see how they are doing in relation to what they know can be achieved, they will also help to raise quality, efficiency and above all, morale. They will help to attract and retain the best into the profession, showing how amazing our workforce is to the rest of the catering sector, head teachers and parents.”
Carrieanne Bishop, LACA National Chair
The Workforce Development Group plans to publish the agreed standards at the LACA main event in July together with an agreed action plan on how they can be used.
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