School Food Trust • Parents & carers - Case studies - A school restaurant fast becoming the hub of school life, for students, teachers and parents

Inspirational Head starts a whole school approach resulting in takings almost doubling at of Worle Community School, Somerset.

January 2008

Action taken

When Trevor Bailey, was appointed Headteacher of Worle Community School, he and the governing body decided that something needed to be done to improve the school’s catering arrangements;

“When I arrived 5/6 years ago, we had an appallingly poor catering service and dining environment. We had two kitchens and each kitchen served into two classrooms. In such an open-planned area supervision was very difficult. It was a hot, noisy, smelly and messy area. The first thing that I did was implement a stay-on-site policy, but in fairness, what we were offering the students in terms of catering and quality was awful. We had been criticised twice by Ofsted for our catering facilities.”

Discussions with North Somerset’s Local Education Authority led to an agreement that the school needed new catering facilities and new teaching spaces. At that time takings across the dining rooms averaged around £600-700 per day.

“What we wanted as a school and as a governing body was to provide for our students high quality food in a high quality environment. We believe that the way a school values its students and treats them, has an enormous impact on their behaviour, engagement and motivation.” Trevor Bailey Headteacher

Actions/steps taken to improve the situation included:-

Consultation: discussions with North Somerset Local Authority, school governors, and the school council. This in turn led to the formation of a project group and parents were kept informed of their plans
Change in Catering: After fully exploring all avenues for change with their previous caterers and having given careful consideration to taking catering in-house, the school went out to tender for other options. New caterers were appointed following interviews by Governors and the Student Council. In the catering contract tender, the School Governors required for the inclusion of a Catering Manager to manage the service.
Kitchen: There was a ‘ban’ on the purchase of a deep fat fryer for the new kitchen. We did away with serving from tin trays, and opted for serving from white porcelain dishes.
Engagement: The new caterers undertook a range of on-going work engaging with the School Council, students, and staff speaking at assemblies in order to devise new menus and take everyone’s views on board.
New Build: In summer 2006 work began on a new purpose built kitchen and dining space. Prue Leith officially opened the new Café Willow in October 2007. On opening the café, she described it as “a kitchen to die for”
Branding/Image: The staff wear black and white. “We want it to feel and look like a restaurant. I insist on calling it a restaurant, not a diner or canteen, as I don’t want to patronise our students” says Trevor. “We branded the restaurant ‘Café Willow’ after consultation with students following a school campaign to preserve an ancient willow tree that had stood on the site of the restaurant.
Point of Service: “We made a conscious decision in planning that all students would have to walk past the hot meals service point. So for that reason, food presentation is crucial. If it looks and smells good then the temptation is there students to try it, if not today, then perhaps tomorrow.“
Introduction of Biometric Cashless System
Governor Engagement/Whole School Approach: “Our vice-chair used to own a hotel and he took a very proactive role. He played a key role in steering the project, together with our Business Manager John Ralph. You need people like them, closely involved in a project like this, chasing and challenging when needed.”

What were the outcomes and benefits?

Takings have almost doubled, increasing from £600 per day to over £1100.
More students are taking hot cooked meals and they have more choice. What’s more, the introduction of a cashless system allows us to introduce incentives and to reward students for eating healthy
Trevor believes the restaurant is fast becoming the hub of school life, with older students now remaining after they have finished eating and talking to friends. “There is a certain ambience,” he adds.
Although it’s anecdotal, staff are saying that afternoons and lunchtimes are a lot calmer than they had been. There are significantly less behaviour problems, and less demand on staff for ‘supervision’.

Comments from the students say a lot about how positive they feel about the changes:

“I’m enjoying lunch again”
“A lot more staff are eating here now, and sit and talk to one another”
“I now want to go and eat there”
“It feels like a grown–up space”
“It feels like going to M&S café”

Sustainability

The building of the new restaurant was a jointly funded project between DCFS Basic Need Funding provided through the LA and the school’s Devolved Capital Funds. The building was designed by GSS Architects and built by ROK. Tenet Education Services provided consultancy on the kitchen designs and now carry out monitoring visits on behalf of the school.

As a result of takings have almost doubled, increasing from £600 per day to £1100.
Learning Experience
Like any school, Trevor admits that at Worle there were challenges.

Initially the main complaint from students was about queues. Our key challenge was how we would get everyone through in the fifty minutes we have for lunchtime quickly and efficiently. This eased as staff and student became familiar with the system and all students are through the process well within the available time.
We overcame the difficulty of managing the foot-flow by consulting with students and listening to their needs. They came up with the solution to use two of the four service points for Years 7 and 8 and two for the remaining years. Thus we now have older and younger students going into the dining room together, though through separate entrances, so that there is a better mix.
Delays in the building works also meant that initially the new caterers had to work with the old space. However, they managed it extremely well. They made changes to the quality of the food provided through consultation/engagement with everyone.