Member Article

Digging for dinner with Jamie Oliver

Children at Hilton Academy in Blakelaw don’t need to sing for their supper but they will be “digging for their dinner” with Jamie Oliver’s Kitchen Garden project and supplying their school kitchen with fruit and vegetables which will be served at breakfast and lunchtimes.

Jamie Oliver’s Kitchen Garden Project enables primary schools to bring food knowledge and cooking skills to life. The project teaches children about food: what it is, where it comes from, and how it affects their bodies, focusing on three key areas of learning: practical cooking, practical growing and a whole school approach to good food. Linked to the curriculum, it will arm primary school children with the skills they need to prepare meals from scratch and the knowledge to make better food choices for themselves and their families.

Hilton Academy which became a Northern Education Trust sponsored academy in December 2012, applied to become a pilot school for the project and have been invited to receive a toolkit of resources and training from Jamie Oliver’s Better Food Foundation. As a result, two members of staff, Leanne Brown, teaching assistant and governor and Gillian Appleby, cook in charge, will be travelling to Jamie Oliver HQ in London at the end of April to take part in a training day where they will be inspired to pass on what they learn to the greater school community.

Head teacher, Shirley Davison explained, “The school has incorporated health eating into the curriculum over the past two years with the introduction of outdoor learning and growing and cooking food with the Let’s Get Cooking Project. The Jamie Oliver Kitchen Garden project is a natural follow on from this and we are delighted to be involved. The project will last for one year and then become a sustained part of school practice.

“Growing and cooking their own food, not only complements the national curriculum in terms of science, literacy and numeracy but gives the children life skills which help them to become healthy, independent, well informed and responsible members of society. “

In support of the Kitchen Garden Project the school has completely transformed its eating experience. The dining hall operates more like a restaurant with background music and children able to choose whom they sit with and where. The menu is set for each day and a wrist band system has been introduced where the diners choose their meals in advance and wear the appropriate band at lunchtime. This means that the children can select food from the entire menu selection which reduces over production and wasted food. A recent Tasting Day saw more than 50 parents and their children enjoy a selection of appetising, nutritious meals

Leanne Brown has been instrumental in creating this new dining experience and explained how successful this innovative approach has been:

“Most of our children stay for school meals and they just weren’t eating the lunches we had prepared or they were bringing in packed lunches. Because the food has improved considerably we now have a school meal take up of 95% and many of the teachers eat here as well.

“It has given the children an opportunity to eat healthy food and helps to develop their social skills such as good table manners and showing courtesy to their friends and other diners.”

Hilton Academy is sponsored by Northern Education Trust (NET), a recently launched,

multi-academy trust based in Newcastle upon Tyne. It is anticipated that NET will be sponsoring 13 academy schools throughout the north of England by the end of its first year in business.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Mandy Peel .