Teacher Training Update – November 2015
12 Nov 2015
Head-teachers are known to be the major catalyst for improving school food culture. Encouragingly, the vast majority of heads (91%) believe that good food helps children perform better; however, many feel daunted by the task of improving their school food. As a result, NCTL, in conjunction with the School Food Plan, have successfully launched a suite of materials to support the training of head-teachers in the importance of good food, health and well-being.
But whilst the support of the head is vital, all teachers have a role to play in fostering a great whole-school food culture. Only by ensuring all teachers understand the importance of good food, good food education and the wider impacts on overall health and well-being, will they feel empowered to access the brilliant range of organisations available to help. We need teachers to ‘want to’ embed a good food culture across the whole school.
To achieve this, we are now working with groups from across the teaching, training and academic spheres, to identify what additional provisions may be required for teachers at all stages of career development; from initial teacher training, to continuous professional development and emerging senior leaders.
We know that many teacher training providers are already doing great things to deliver training and improve teacher awareness in this area. However, efforts often occur in isolation and we want to ensure that provisions are as joined up and ambitious as possible, in order to deliver the greatest improvement in school food culture.
To this end, we held an initial round-table with over 30 interested groups on the 9th of November, which highlighted the strong enthusiasm for more action to be taken to improve teacher training at all levels. We’re keen to involve all those with an interest in good school food in shaping the direction of this work, and are now actively collating views on how best to take the project forward.
If your organisation would like to learn more, or would like to get involved in developing or delivering this work, please contact Paul Blakeley (paul@schoolfoodplan.com).