Spring Update 2017

Sunshine, showers and potatoes gently chitting on the windowsill; it must be time for our spring update. We've already had some excellent adventures this term with schools out and about cooking, growing, eating and learning all about fresh tasty food. Read on to find out more about our projects and how you can get stuck into spring.

Fresh Enterprise

We're delighted to be working with Belazu on a brand new food education programme called Fresh Enterprise. Students from Cardinal Wiseman School in Ealing began the programme with a tour of Belazu's hi-tech production area and met some of the people behind the products. Next step is to look more deeply into labelling and marketing before coming back to Belazu to work with development chef Ross to taste ingredients and create a product.

Gardening with Lucy

Ten of our lucky member schools are enjoying hands-on help in the garden from school gardener, Lucy Nacson-Jones. Lucy will be visiting schools across London to work with young gardeners to get their plots in tip top shape for a summer harvest.

Know Your Onions

Talking of gardening, our intrepid friends at Garden Organic have been climbing onto rooftops and delving into dark corners at secondary schools across London in an attempt to find a place to grow veg. With the help of our expert horticulturists, all 15 schools participating in Know your Onions should have some tasty veg to sell at their local street market in July.

Good news for food-growers!

Food Growing Schools: London will be continuing its valuable work for another year thanks to new funding. The partnership has achieved remarkable results helping to promote and support food growing, healthy eating and sustainability in schools across London. Find out all the ways your school can get involved here.

Do you have a pond?

Our friends at Pond School want to understand what teachers need to confidently use their ponds to enrich the primary science curriculum. Pond School aims to develop resources and expertise to help you get the most out of your school pond. E mail Pond School to find out more.

Campaign News

It's all very well enjoying all this food education, but campaigning must continue! We're busy at work with the School Food Plan Alliance, championing the School Food Plan and its 17 actions. Two of the actions have come into focus this term; school food standards and cooking on the curriculum. O ur campaign to get all schools to comply to the standards continues and we'll be collaborating on a new research project, Food Education Learning Landscape, looking at delivery of food education since cooking was made compulsory in 2014. You can get updates from the Alliance here.

Last Word

With so much going on in our world of food education, we thought it would be nice to give the last word in each newsletter to our fantastic teachers and children. This term the last word goes to one of our Young Marketeers during our winter sale at Borough Market last month:

"I really like making soup and bread. I went home and made ciabatta with my mum and am helping out with cooking lots more at home."