School Chef Amber Francis on The Importance of Getting Students Onside

It’s especially exciting that this comes with a commitment to developing a national system for monitoring compliance with the School Food Standards. This will help ensure every school is serving the great school food pupils deserve.”

“Like many school chefs, I fed into the consultation process, and it really feels like our feedback has had an impact. I was pleased to see that the consultation response references concerns raised around operational challenges – such as increased ingredient costs and issues around staffing and equipment.”

“Pupil acceptance is the main thing for me. We all want to make and serve amazing food, but it must be food students want to try, eat and enjoy. I’m pleased the revised standards allow school kitchen teams to keep serving familiar foods – only now they will contain more of the good stuff.
Because this isn’t about demonising any specific food group. Healthy eating is about balance. The new standards support kitchen teams to serve more of the food students need to thrive. It’s about putting fruit and veg at the forefront along with pulses and legumes. It’s about increasing fibre and wholegrains.

If I’m honest, I’ll miss being able to occasionally serve a deep-fried item, but I can still serve our students great fish and chips – we just need to think a bit more creatively.”

On Challenges in secondary schools

“We can’t ignore that there are some specific challenges when it comes to school food in secondary schools. At this age, pupils start to have more options in many areas of their life and that includes food. That might mean having their own money to spend or travelling to school by themselves giving them access to food available on the high street.”

“It’s important at secondary schools that we offer pupils variety, which reflects the world they’re in. This can feel challenging with limited budgets, but there are lots of things we’ve found work well.

A big part of this is about offering lots of variety across our menus. Our menu is on a two-week cycle, and it changes every half-term.”

“This is about daily variety too. We only offer one or two hot options at lunch time, but we’re also ensuring that we’re providing a range of nutritious cold food too. This gives young people more autonomy to choose the food they like.

We also give pupils autonomy and choice through our daily salad bar. If we’re offering lots of sensible, tasty items on the salad bar, we can trust students to make choices that work for them.”

“Another great way we’ve given students options and a sense of autonomy is with a yoghurt bar. Students can top their yoghurt with homemade granola, toasted seeds, fresh fruits and other items, which allows them to choose the bits they like and to try new things. It’s also much more cost effective than serving individual yoghurt pots.

It’s so important to allow as much decision making as possible – this helps students make great choices in school and beyond the school gate.”

On Food literacy

“Kitchen staff play an important part in helping students to try and enjoy different foods. By engaging with students, talking to them and building a connection, kitchen teams can help students feel more comfortable trying new things.”

“At secondary level, it can be hard to find opportunities to bring food education into the classroom. That’s why I developed Try Something New Day at our school. It’s a way for students to try new foods, ingredients and flavours and it brings food literacy into the dining hall. 

If a pupil tries something and they don’t like it, we can talk to them to explore this more. Is it the taste they don’t like? Or the colour, the texture, the way it looks? These conversations help students learn and understand what they do and don’t like. It’s fine if someone doesn’t like something. Even these moments can be turned into a positive learning experience. 

The costs for Try Something New Day are minimal. I work closely with our suppliers to ensure we’re getting good prices and as well as offering a chance to taste the ingredient, we’ll also incorporate it into our salad bar, so nothing is wasted.

It’s been brilliant to see this concept that we started at our school being rolled out to other schools in the Chefs in Schools network.”

“Kitchen teams have such an important role when it comes to implementing the updated school food standards, far beyond the food we’re serving.”