Food for Life Flagship School
St. Katherine’s was the first secondary school in the country to achieve the prestigious Food for Life Partnership Gold Award, which was presented to them on Wednesday 2 December 2009 by celebrity chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall at a ceremony held at Sheepgrove Organic Farm in Berkshire.
We want to improve our food culture and involve our whole school and local communities in doing this. We are working with our Food for Life Partners on a five year initiative to revolutionise school meals, reconnect young people with where their food comes from and inspire families to grow and cook food.
We began back in September 2007 and hold a number of exciting events and activities to support this. In September 2008 we held our first ever Food Festival - “A Taste of St. Katherine’s”. This was a huge success with students, parents and staff alike and is now a regular annual festival incorporating a wide variety of fun activities, workshops and community events which provide great learning experiences too!
60% of the school’s spend on food and drink for catering purposes is through suppliers based within a 50 mile radius of the school. Many of the suppliers are very local being based in Somerset. For example Failand Farm, supply organic meat and is less than 3 miles away, Farringtons Farm Shop in Farrington Gurney supply vegetables and is 18 miles away with Chalmers, Cheddar supplying cheese being 33 miles away. The school also has its own school gardener, 2 members of staff and approximately 20 students who are actively involved with the organic school garden, regularly supplying produce for school meals.
St. Katherine’s Catering Team are part of the school staff and work hard to ensure high quality, healthy food and drink are provided from breakfast to lunchtime. All of the food is prepared from ingredients which are sourced from local suppliers and cooked on site. We are proud of our desire for good quality, healthy food simply and professionally prepared to high standards.
We hope you will be very excited about the food and catering at St. Katherine’s and will be looking forward to enjoying school meals. Parents and Carers are also cordially invited to join students to eat a meal at school, and please contact our Catering Superviser, Mrs Lewis, if you would like to arrange this.
As a Food for Life Flagship School and Community we are working to strengthen cooking and growing food as part of our curriculum and all faculties and subject areas have some really exciting programs of work and activities to impact on all students. We hope you will value and support this important work.