Summary

Jacqui Hadwick, Catering Manager at Clewer Green Primary School in Winsdor, has been involved in a light touch direct school engagement project with the School Food Trust. This project is aimed at schools that wish to improve their current school meal provision using advice, resources and support from the Trust. This support is telephone based only and is held over a period of up to eight weeks.

Background Information

Clewer Green Primary has 171 pupils on roll, with a 44% paid school meal take up at the start of this project. This compares favourably to the regional average of 38.6% take up, and the school also has a 90% take up of free school meals. The school has a 1 hour and 20 minute lunch break with just one sitting and in September 2010, Clewer Green began to provide its school meals service in-house.

Actions Taken

As Catering Manager, Jacqui has led the healthy eating plans and subsequent developments in the school. Although the school had a fairly high take up already, Jacqui was keen to try and increase it and to introduce policies and practices to encourage and promote healthy eating. All of the following activities and events have taken place at the school during this time, using a number of School Food Trust resources to support the implementation.

• Menu templates have been used to present the new menu in a creative and professional way, and shared with parents and pupils. These templates have also inspired Jacqui to plan ahead and create the menus for spring and summer 2011 in advance!
• A healthy eating week was held in January, and the PHSE teacher used the School Meals Detective Primary Curriculum pack with the pupils in the classroom during this week.
• Parents have been invited into the school to attend taster sessions in the period January – April 2011

Outcomes

• School meal take up has increased since the start of the project from an average of 70 meals per day in October to an average of 85 meals per day in January. The school now has a take up of 53%, almost a 10% increase.
• The healthy eating week also got the young people involved in a menu design competition, not only getting them thinking about healthy food but also involving them in a fun an creative way in their own school food provision

Future Plans

• Working alongside the Head Teacher and the PHSE teacher, Jacqui plans to introduce a packed lunch policy, using guidance and resources already supplied by the Trust, with the aim of increasing take up even further.
• The school plan to use the Trust’s dessert recipes for the healthy snack trolley, which will be run by the School Council members at break times

Evaluation

Jacqui said that “The CD-roms and curriculum packs for the teachers to do some healthy school meal work in the classroom, and the advice and recommendations from the Trust” were really useful to the school in improving school meal take up.

Contact details

If you would like further information regarding this case study then please feel free to contact the School Food Trust on 0800 089 5001. Alternatively please feel free to email any enquiries to info@sft.gsi.gov.uk. Thank you.