2024: A sustainable school kitchen at Rushey Green Primary School in London
Chefs in Schools is a UK charity that aims to fuel the future by transforming school food and food education, training kitchen teams to serve great school lunches. They provide hands-on support to schools in London, Bournemouth and Sheffield and online resources that can support all schools to provide healthier school meals.
One project supported by Chefs in Schools is the kitchen garden at Rushey Green Primary in London. To mark International School Meals Day, Chefs in Schools today wrote on Instagram:
“Rushey Green Primary in Catford, London, is passionate about the transformative power of school food when done right. Since beginning their school food transformation journey with us, the school has created a productive kitchen garden with which to kickstart their students’ food education journeys. But this isn’t just any kitchen garden – this is a beautiful legacy to their much-missed teacher, Sabina Nessa. It was created in her honour, with an incredible mural and a focus on outdoor education – which Sabina was passionate about. This is a place for healing and learning.
“The kitchen team are food educators. What does this mean? They teach children about what’s growing outside. Once lunch is served, Luke steps out from behind the hatch, he chats to students about what’s on their plates that day, tables are set up with new spices, herbs, fruits and veg for the kids to get to know.
“What Rushey Green has done so well is recognise the need for innovation when it comes to embedding food into the whole school’s culture. Lessons around food often take place outside, in the garden, harvesting fresh herbs for tomorrow’s lunch, enabling children to engage with the food that ends up on their plates and gain practical skills at the same time.”