Shaftesbury School Initiative
FSA Food Hygiene and Nutrition grant winner 2005-06
Aims and Objectives
The aim of the initiative was to raise awareness of healthy eating and food safety within Shaftesbury school, a local comprehensive with over 1000 students. The approach targeted 4 key areas; encouraging and enabling healthy food choices through the setting up of a fair trade/healthy tuck shop and breakfast club, the running of informal cooking lessons with sixth formers and helping the school register as a food hygiene training centre.The long-term aim was to put in place an infrastructure and local network which would allow this project to be sustainable with particular reference to the upcoming replacement of the catering contract.
Organisations Involved
1. North Dorset District Council
2. Shaftesbury Healthy School Steering Group (incorporating a School Nutrition Action Group – SNAG). The group met regularly to discuss issues surrounding the introduction of the scheme into the school with representation from teachers, pupils, school nurse, canteen manager, etc. This group will continue to run and further develop the initiative.
3. David Shepherd, Chairman of Shaftesbury’s Chamber of Trade who offered his expertise and practical help on the sixth form initiative (cooking lessons). Through Mr Shepherd links were also forged with local businesses in relation to the new food hygiene training centre.
4. South West Dorset Primary Care Trust. Their dieticians were able to provide help and guidance on the sort of messages we should be giving out for each age group including budgeting advice for the sixth form cookbook.
5. Initial (the current catering contractor at the school).
Target Group
All pupils of Shaftesbury SchoolMethodology
The scheme was launched at the school in October with a week of free tastings, competitions, and assembly talks. During this week every student was given a pamphlet outlining the initiative and asking for volunteers. Incorporated into this was a questionnaire designed to be filled out by both pupils and parents to be used to assess the general attitude to healthy eating and allow baseline figures to be collected. Staff also received a tailored pamphlet inviting their comments. The canteen, currently run through an external contract, also served healthy meal options and gave away free fruit smoothies.
The launch week was designed to ensure the whole school was made aware of the scheme. Questionnaires were given out to 1000 students and parents, each class attended the specially tailored assemblies and the stand had approx 700 visitors during the week.
Tuck Shop - The tuck shop was designed and run by key stage 4classes as part of their Business Studies GCSE. It sold food products in line with Shaftesbury School’s Fair trade policy and offered a healthy alternative to the canteen snack food.
The tuck shop initially ran every Wednesday break time, with the funding for the first order coming from the scheme, after which time it became self-financing. The council printed up the posters to advertise where and when it would take place. Due to its success further sessions are planned over the coming months which, in order to make sustainable, are to be linked to the work on financial capability and enterprise.
The stand was set up in the reception area of the school, a main thoroughfare, and received approximately 600 visitors with 150 evaluations returned.
Breakfast Club - This was led by Julia Linsley, the lead coordinator of the initiative at Shaftesbury School. The club was envisaged as using the existing canteen facilities and serving healthy breakfast options to students who had signed up to the club. Interest was initially gauged through letters to parents and is to be run during two test periods in order to assess take up. The funding is being used to help set up the club and initially pay for the members of the staff required. A further opportunity has arisen through the extended schools agenda to use the breakfast club for children in the local community and to link the activity with teaching and learning experiences.
Letters were sent home to all parents at the school inviting them to sign up their children for the club. 30 parents responded with an interest in taking advantage of the facility as well as 8 members of staff who also wanted access to a healthy breakfast on school premises.
Sixth Form ‘Living on a Loan’ - This part of the scheme involved designing and carrying out cooking on a budget lessons for a class of sixth formers. The six lessons were delivered in partnership with a local chef and were designed to be a fun, light-hearted look at cooking on a budget.
Each lesson started with a short demonstration followed by an opportunity to taste the various meal options and then time for the students to make their own versions. All the food was provided by the funding and designed to encourage healthier choices. The lessons were used as the basis for putting together a cookbook designed to contain everything needed to get started in the kitchen, with lists of essential utensils, hints and tips, etc.
Initially the lesson was attended by 30 sixth formers, with all 180 sixth formers receiving the cookbook.
Other initiatives - Running alongside these main initiatives were a number of smaller complementary projects designed to feed back relevant information such as the canteen surveys and completion of food diaries. Small groups of year 7 were given the task of producing ideas for healthy lunchboxes.
Funding
The project received a grant of £10,000 from the Food Standards AgencySustainability
The future sustainability of the initiative has been addressed through the creation of appropriate food policies which will be able to feed into negotiations of the upcoming catering contract.
Evaluation
In order to assess the impact of the initiative a number of quantitative and qualitative evaluations were carried out. These showed that each part of the scheme was well received with strong awareness in the school of who we were and why we were there.
The sixth form ‘living on a loan’ lessons were always fully attended, with a fun, informal atmosphere. Evaluation showed that the majority of students had picked up new cooking skills and food hygiene tips as well as learning about eating on a budget. The tuck shop was also very popular with stock selling out fast. The survey indicated that this was a facility which students wanted to see stocked with healthy options. Once up and running this facility was able to offer a real alternative to the previously unhealthy snack options and due to the success of the trial period this is set to become a permanent feature. Embedding the tuck shop within the curriculum created opportunities to discuss food issues and Fair-trade.
An initial survey of the canteen, carried out prior to the official launch of the initiative, showed that even those students who wanted to choose healthy options were inhibited from doing so by the lack of real choice, with some children selecting not just poor food choices but also no main part to their meal. This went unchallenged and unnoticed.
One of the major achievements of the initiative was the successful negotiation with the existing catering contractors, who are in the last year of a seven year contract with the school. Both during and after the launch week they switched from the usual grab food menu of chips, pizzas, etc to serving healthy meal options and restricting unhealthier ones. More students then actively chose healthy options and less unhealthy ones. This ensured that the launch made a big impact and continued to do so for the rest of the year.
The promotional material made a strong impact with an easily identifiable branding theme. This was due to the in-house skills, interest and commitment of our reprographics department. The funding allowed the department to produce publications that intentionally moved away from the traditional health promotion look and feel taking into consideration the target audience.
A major part of the success was due to the drive and vision of Julia Linsley, the lead co-ordinator at the school, who negotiated with other professionals on our behalf. Without her help we would have struggled to fulfil all of our commitments.
Lessons Learnt
Working alongside a large organisation with some sixty teachers each with their own priorities, specialities and outlook proved difficult to overcome at times. This was also complicated by the fact that the school was tied into old contracts and ways of working that did not benefit the students or sit easily alongside the initiative. In order to address the sustainability of the scheme policies were put in place which addressed the current limitations and will be fed into the negotiations for the upcoming catering contract.
Launch week - Although the questionnaires were well received only 104 out of 1000 given out were returned completed. With hindsight this issue could have been overcome by splitting the pupil/parent questionnaire and encouraging pupils to fill them in during lesson time. This of course would have impacted on the cost of the process.
Tuck Shop - The main problem encountered was having to overcome the existing catering contract which limited the sale of food in the school exclusively to them. In order to succeed the caterers had to be encouraged to become involved with their own healthy meal deals and persuaded that the tuck shop would not impact on their profit. Permission was obtained to run the tuck shop once a week and so every Wednesday for six weeks snacks were sold by the students in the reception area. Students also evaluated interest and sought information on the type of food most wanted.
Another potential issue was getting the necessary teachers on board and sustaining their involvement; this became tied up with other teaching issues over which we had no influence.
Breakfast Club - This proved to be a difficult part of the scheme to deliver and was subject to a number of complications. Lengthy consultation was required regarding the arrival times of school buses, the limitations of the current catering contract, Union clearance regarding the involvement of responsible persons to oversee the students, as well as ensuring that the students were covered by insurance and allowed onto the premises early. The start of the club was delayed whilst these issues were explored but a fully operational breakfast club will be available from summer 2006.
Living on a Loan - The main problem was the time needed to research, draw up and carry out the lessons which included the planning and buying of the food to be used. The other issue that needed careful planning was the limited time during the lessons (1hr) that meant not all of the activities could be carried out to the depth originally envisioned.
Timescales for completing the cookbook conflicted with other priorities both in relation to the initiative and outside pressures.
Other lessons learnt;
- It is important to recognise the barriers to making healthy choices especially with regard to children. Many of theses barriers within the school were due to the previously low priority given to food within the school day. It was therefore vital to concentrate on areas where change could be achieved.
- Equal importance should be given to try to connect with parents without making them feel like they are being blamed
- Health promotion messages need to engage the target audience and should be appropriate to those it is intended to reach. Consideration should be given to altering messages according to the age range and skills of the group.
- Any promotional material should aim to compete with contemporary advertising, don’t be afraid to try something innovative.
- In order to allow an initiative to evolve and overcome problems it is vital that the approach is flexible.
- Unless the structure of the organisation you are working with is comprehensible, opportunities can be missed and skills underutilised.
Contact Details
Contact: Sarah Arnold
Organisation: North Dorset District Council
Email: SArnold@north-dorset.gov.uk