The School Food Trust was set up by the Government after Jamie Oliver woke the world up to the disastrous diet our children were eating at school. I became Chair of the Trust almost a year ago.

Our job at the Trust is to help schools meet the new standards set by government for healthy school food. The job is dauntingly big: Twenty five years of ever-worse food in most schools, an increasing culture of constant snacking and junk food,  and less and less cooking and knees-under eating going on at home cannot be reversed in an instant. But by persuading teachers that children work better if healthy, persuading parents not to undermine the schools efforts to feed their offspring well, persuading children to give the new school meals a go, persuading local authorities to pay for better catering, and by working with caterers to provide delicious as well as healthy food, we hope to change a generation’s eating habits! 

But the immediate task is to work with schools to improve the food they provide. Many of course, do a terrific job. I went one day to Mossbourne Community Academy in Hackney, a City Academy that replaced one of the worst schools in the country and was astonished at how they’d managed to get 98% of the children eating school meals. The cafeteria was packed with children and teachers tucking into fish fillets baked with a topping of finely shredded vegetables (carrots, leeks, red onions) couscous and salad. There was also a vegetable curry for the veggies. Pudding was Apricot and sultana crumble and custard.   

How had they done it? Hackney is not exactly a leafy middle-class suburb. Many of the children have been brought up on chips and burgers, nuggets and crisps. And yet here they were, eating hake and veg! 

The head, Michael Wilshaw, believes that you need to work with the children so they understand what good food can do for you, with the parents to get them on side and enthusiastic about feeding children well at home too, with the teachers to set a good example and eat with the children, with the local authority to provide that extra bit of funding (he reckons that the £1.50p a head the school gets for Free school meals and that they charge to paying parents leaves a 10% shortfall which the school has to subsidise) and of course with the cooks and caterers to inspire and train them to produce delicious food.

Which is pretty much what we do a the School Food Trust on a bigger scale. We have to persuade head teachers, teachers, caterers, cooks, parents, children and local councillors that food is just as important as anything else that happens in school.   One of our biggest initiatives is:    

Lets Get Cooking.

In August this year, the Big Lottery announced their award of £20 million to the School Food Trust for their charitable enterprise Let’s Get Cooking. The money will fund a potential 5,000 after-school cookery clubs, to be set up all over the country.

The monumental project will ensure that the next generation of children do not suffer from the same lack of cookery skills that is currently contributing to the UK’s poor diet, poor knowledge of food and poor health.

Any school can set up a cookery club and apply for a small grant from Let’s Get Cooking. The organizers are keen to ensure that innovation and excitement are not stamped out of the enterprise by bureaucracy, and they will not be prescriptive about what the clubs do.

Prue Leith, Chair of the School Food Trust, says “All we ask is that he clubs involve parents and the local community, that they cook healthy food, not just cakes and cookies, that they meet regularly.  Some of our clubs are more traditional teaching clubs in a food technology classroom, some of them hold events where they cater for events like parents’ days, some run bread or pasta workshops, some cook for tea parties for the local care-home. One makes fruit smoothies and sells them at parents’ evenings to raise funds for the cookery club. We welcome anything that allows children, and their parents, to discover how interesting and exciting cooking can be.”

Click here to read more about 'Lets get cooking'

There are other initiatives which we are working on.  

Million Meals

The Million Meals Campaign is being spearheaded by the School Food Trust and aims to have a million more children eating school lunches by the end of 2010.

To help take the Million Meals campaign forward the Trust have developed a series of approaches: - TENPlates, which have been used by schools to increase take-up of school meals.

Schools which sign up to the campaign can access a range of resources, including case study information and suggestions from schools which have already implemented activity. There is also a dedicated Million Meals Movie on each of the TENPlates which shows how schools have transformed their school meals service and the impact it has had on both their meal take-up and the school’s overall performance.

For Schools which have signed up to the campaign there are further resources available including an Ask the Advisor section, a Discussion Forum and a Useful Resources section.

To find out more and sign up to the campaign, please visit www.schoolfoodtrust.org.uk/millionmeals  

Feast

The School Food Trust has led in the establishment of the School FEAST (Food Excellence And Skills Training) Network.

The School FEAST Network will bring together excellent training providers across England who will offer a wide range of training and support ot all those involved in improving school meals, incluidng school cooks, kitchen assistants, lunchtime supervisors, teachers, bursars and employers.

The Network will, over time, enable any member of the school food workforce - wherever they happen to be in the country - to access excellent training to meet the needs of their customers... now and in the future.

The Network includes further education colleges, private and employer led training providers.  These organisations will provide a 'core offer' of training or qualifications either individually as a School FEAST centre or together with others as a School FEAST partnership.

The School Food Trust has developed an easy-to-use School FEAST website to support the network.  Visit www.schoolfeast.co.uk to find out more.

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