Chefs in Schools

Fueling the future: helping improve school food and food education

What children eat during the school day plays an important part in their health, wellbeing and even how well they concentrate in the classroom. That’s why we wanted to help make sure more children are getting a high-quality, nutritious school lunch.

Chefs in Schools gets professional chefs to work with school kitchen teams to help transform their meals. It does this by delivering a bespoke service to schools across London – those with an above national average percentage of free school meals. The service includes recruiting a new head chef and helping them transition from professional kitchens to busy school canteens, support with suppliers, menu development and help in linking to the cooking curriculum.

Only 26% of primary schools are implementing the requirements of the National Curriculum to deliver practical cookery education.
Our grant of £50,000 to Chefs in Schools is helping transform the meals created in a mix of primary, secondary and special educational needs school canteens across London.
92% of the chefs placed in a school noticed a positive shift in the food culture of their school.

Nutritious meals created by professional chefs

Our grant of £50,000 is helping to keep costs down for those schools with tighter budgets and give more of them the opportunity to benefit from the Chefs in Schools programme.

The end result? Kitchen teams who cook and serve up nutritious meals – all made from scratch, with only responsibly sourced, fresh and seasonal produce.

“After a really challenging year, we are pleased that more schools are recognising the important role that food plays in their pupils’ health and development. We are seeing a growing demand for our services and so this project will be vital in ensuring that schools are able to afford to access our support.”

Naomi Duncan, Chief Executive, Chefs in Schools