Cooking in schools

All change in the school canteen

In about the time it takes a child to learn how to read, school dinners have been transformed into nutritious meals. But that's not all that's been cooking in schools. In an effort to change habits and attitudes, the subject is being tackled from the ground up. Learning about food and cooking at school should equip kids to make informed choices which should in turn help to improve the nation's health and reduce the threat of obesity.

Lunch crunch time

Since Jamie Oliver blew the whistle on the dreadful state of much school catering in 2005, there has been a concerted, multi million-pound campaign to provide children with better, healthier meals.

School food hit rock bottom at the same time as a catastrophic decline in cooking skills. When the new secondary school curriculum is introduced in 2011, cooking - in the form of a greatly improved food technology provision - becomes compulsory for 11 to 14-year-olds. Teachers have been trained and kitchens and food rooms are being installed to make sure that every child has a chance to learn to cook.

The primary school curriculum is currently being reviewed and campaigners hope that practical cookery will be made part of it. In Scotland the new curriculum includes practical food activities from the earliest years.

Cooking returns

Cooking lessons for 11 to 14-year-olds, announced in January 2008 by Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families Ed Balls, are part of the Government's obesity strategy. A new generation of food technology teachers is being primed - 300 have already been recruited, and £300,000 provided to equip food rooms at schools that previously had none.

Thus far 500 schools, about a third of them mainstream secondaries and many other special schools, have successfully bid for the money to install the necessary facilities in time for 2011 through Building Schools for the Future. This investment programme will also provide cookery teaching rooms as part of improvements to schools. The restructured and improved food technology curriculum will focus on practical cookery, healthy eating, nutrition and food hygiene.

Starting young

It might surprise many parents but food skills are already compulsory on the primary school curriculum, theoretically at least. In practice, either because they don't have trained staff or the facilities, few schools do much, if any, hands-on cooking with children. Now that cooking is to be taught to secondary school children, the pressure is on to give younger children a better practical food education, as already happens in Wales and Scotland. Anita Cormac, director of Focus on Food, which has campaigned on this issue for a decade, wants the emphasis now to be on training primary teachers and making sure the revised curriculum spells out the need for real cooking.

Clubbing together

Given the lack of opportunities and facilities offered to primary school children, cooking clubs are particularly important. 'Let's Get Cooking' is a campaign to teach children and families to cook through a network of after-school cookery clubs that involve wider communities, not just children, to help change eating habits at home.

The aim is to have 5,000 clubs set up by 2010 - there are almost half that number already - starting in areas of high deprivation. The money comes from the Big Lottery Fund and helps clubs - which depend on volunteers - pay for training, equipment and running costs for three years.

The scheme is being led by the School Food Trust, the organisation chaired by restaurateur, broadcaster and food writer Prue Leith and created by the Government to improve school dinners. Behind it lies the belief that children (and families) who can cook will make healthier food choices.

Dining in style

The School Food Trust was set up by the Government to implement changes in school meals by training school cooks, providing advice and sharing ideas. From September 2009, when secondary school meals must meet nutrient-based standards, all the regulations for nutritious school food for every age group (except nursery school children) will be in place.

Having got rid of the likes of burgers, chips and fizzy drinks, this next step requires dishes to provide certain nutrients - enough protein, fibre, iron and vitamins for example. Some caterers complain that these standards are unrealistic and will drive even more teenagers away from school dinners. But the School Food Trust insists that the requirements are not as inflexible as council caterers' representatives claim they are and that a third of schools already manage to fulfil them.

The extra standards do not require every meal to include all nutrients, but for the menu cycle to offer the range, so parents can be sure that if children regularly eat at school their daytime diet will be balanced. That's as long as they can't leave the premises and buy chips - a problem in many secondary schools. The last round of figures for school dinner take-up showed that the number of over-11s opting for them had dropped by 0.5 per cent.

Among younger children, though, there are signs that the investment is paying off as more choose to eat the dinners - take-up in primary schools went up two per cent. As these children move into secondary schools it's hoped that they will bring their healthier eating habits with them. Many primary schools have introduced restrictions on what children can bring in for packed lunch so that those on school dinners can't feel envious of what's in their classmates' lunchboxes.

Free meals in the future?

Around 16 per cent of children in England come from families with an income low enough to qualify them for free school meals. Many more children not eligible for free school meals may be discouraged by the cost - an estimated 400,000 children are missing out on a nourishing midday meal because they find it too much to pay. That's why the Government's Department of Children, Families and Schools is piloting free school meals regardless of income.

Some people, including Jamie Oliver, have voiced fears that the free meal scheme could compromise the improving quality of the meals and will subsidise families who don't need it. Introducing universal free school meals could cost the government £1bn a year. Before this happens the £20m pilot scheme in two deprived areas will monitor the effect of free meals for all on children's health, behaviour and academic standards over two years.

The Scottish Government has already announced that from August 2010 all five to seven-year-olds will have school meals for free, following a successful pilot scheme which saw more children opting for dinners and becoming willing to try unfamiliar healthy foods.

From the ground up

The idea behind the Food for Life Partnership, a Soil Association-led network of schools and communities committed to transforming food culture in schools, is to teach children about food through growing and cooking. The Food for Life Partnership helps schools set up gardens and teaches children to cook with fresh, seasonal, local, sustainable and - as much as possible - organic and high-welfare ingredients. Currently 600 schools are signed up and the aim is to have 3600 more involved by 2011.

Updated April 2009