Whole school approach
Hungry for Success recognises that a whole child, whole school approach to food and healthier eating habits is the best way to achieve change.
This means that everything schools do, from home economics and health education lessons to school dinners and the tuck shop, has the same message about healthy food and making informed choices.
Partnership working
A whole child, whole school approach to healthy eating is only possible if the school works in partnership with the whole school community including pupils, parents, teachers, catering and support staff, the school board, parent teacher association, parents' groups and appropriate external agencies such as the school nurse, health promotion workers and dieticians.
Schools should establish clear communications with parents and carers about the school dinners and other food provision in school. Parents should also have the opportunity to become involved in projects to improve the food in schools, whether it is the healthy tuck shop, a breakfast club or helping pupils to grow their own vegetable garden.
A School Nutrition Action Group (SNAG) or the pupil council can be used to help evaluate what the school community thinks about the food in school and also to come up with ideas to improve problem areas. It is important that parents' views are sought as part of this process and that there is a role for interested parents on the SNAG to take account of their perspective.
Useful links
Food in Schools
Food in Schools is produced by the Department of Health and the Department for Education and Skills to help support English schools in their approach to healthy eating and food education. It contains sections on the curriculum, school meals and food throughout the school day as well as an online Food in Schools toolkit with eight projects to implement a whole school approach to healthier food.
healthyliving
Recipes, tips on eating and exercise, 'ask the experts' and a friendly quiz to test how healthy your diet is: all these can be found on the healthyliving site.
The Cooking Bus
The Food Standards Agency Cooking Bus has been developed in partnership with the Focus on Food campaign to get across healthy eating and food safety messages to schoolchildren in an engaging way. It provides interactive cooking sessions for pupils, and schools should visit the web pages to catch the bus at their school.
