School Background
Paget Primary is an infant and junior school in the Pype Hayes area of Birmingham. Pype Hayes has recently been through a period of regeneration, which has improved housing stock in the area. This is a smaller than average size school. There are 206 pupils on roll 120 take up school meals with 90 of those being free school meals, which is above average.
“It serves an area where there has been major regeneration in recent years. Overall, the levels of social disadvantage are above average. The proportion of pupils from minority ethnic backgrounds has steadily increased in recent years and is well above average. The percentage of pupils with learning difficulties and/or disabilities is above average and varies considerably from class to class. The numbers of pupils leaving and joining the school throughout each year is above average.”
(Ofsted, 2007)
Project Team
- Head Teacher
- Deputy Head Teacher
- Cookserve Supervisor
- Local Authority Catering Services Area Manager
- Industry Forum Facilitator
- SFT Contact
Case Study
Read the case study on Paget Primary School here:
www.schoolfoodtrust.org.uk/casestudies/pagetprimaryschool
Final Report
Executive Summary
Objectives decided on by all stakeholders
- Increase take up and sustain on an ongoing basis – minimise the effect of seasonality (numbers drop during summer term)
- Improve utilisation of kitchen space
- Investigate possibilities of moving to full production kitchen – develop project plan and costings
- Increase equipment capacity to improve quality of food e.g. industrial mixer to enable the staff to make bread and cake products.
- Improve customer service, quality of meals produced, queue times and reduce waste.
- Make lunch time and enjoyable sociable experience.
Initial observations showed the current kitchen to be in a good state of repair, but lacked the equipment required to provide a full production service. Observations in the dining room during lunch identified high noise levels – it was almost impossible to hold a conversation with the person sat next to you. It was recommended that as part of the dining room re-decoration measures should be taken to try and reduce the overall noise level and hence improve the overall dining experience.
The kitchen did have capacity to provide meals for all pupils on roll using the current cook-serve process and equipment.
Results
General
- Improved staff morale and teamwork through training and a better working environment.
Kitchen
- Full production kitchen now in service
- Improved food quality and greater menu choice
- Increased storage space through investment in new shelving and using the boiler room for additional storage space.
- Increased capacity to produce bread based products
- New 6 burner hob and oven to enable full production service.
Dining room
- Improved dining hall environment through re-decoration – murals painted on walls with sporting theme.
- Reduced background and reverberation noise levels through installation of a stretch ceiling system
Servery
- Improved throughput by purchase of a dessert cart – now the students collect their main course from the main servery and return for their desserts from the stand alone cart to the side of the service area.
- Flight trays replaced by separate plates and bowls. This has reduced the amount of waste food as children are encouraged to eat their entire main course before going to get their dessert.
- The production of menu booklets with pictures of all the dishes have been distributed to all parents and are used to help with the selection of meals in advance as the students now know what is on offer on each day.
