2024: Jamie Oliver school meals award highlights sustainable food

Image: Richard Clatworthy

The Good School Foods Awards, an initiative from UK celebrity chef and campaigner Jamie Oliver, is set to highlight the importance of the sustainability of our school meals.

Now open for nominations, the ‘Sustainability Stars’ award looks to honour an education setting that has gone the extra mile to make the food sustainable and teach children about sustainability. The winning school will get Blue Peter and BBC Teach Presenter Lee Connelly’s School Gardening Success programme, which consists of video lesson plans, equipment for growing and dedicated teacher support.

Further award categories include Catering Team Champions, School Leader Food Hero, Youth Activist of 2024, Food Educator of 2024, Rising Star, Community & Kindness Award and Joe Wicks’ Food For Fuel Award.

Jamie Oliver says: “We launched the awards last year and the response was overwhelming. We had thousands of entries across the country but more importantly than that, the positive effect winning had on last year’s winners is what really made the difference.” He continues, “We wanted to show love and appreciation to the food educators, teachers and catering teams that work so hard 190 days a year to feed our kids and teach them about the joy of food. I truly believe schools are our secret weapon. From the food they serve to the cooking skills they teach kids, they lay the foundation for children’s health and wellbeing, as well as their academic success and future productivity. These awards are all about celebrating what is brilliant in our school and wider food systems and I am delighted to say the nominations are now open.”

Following on from the success of last year’s inaugural awards, the Good School Food awards – sponsored by Tefal – celebrate the amazing catering teams, educators, campaigners and unsung heroes who, day in and day out, go the extra mile to make sure Britain’s school children are well nourished.

Starting in 1906, Britain has the oldest school meal system in the world. It now has a workforce larger than the Royal Navy and Air Force combined, serving nearly 5 million meals every day; that equates to about 41 meals per second.

Voting for the Good School Food awards opened on 6th February at www.jamieoliver.com/schoolfoodawards and nominees from across the UK will be shortlisted by the judges from March 24th when applications close. The winners will be unveiled on key media partners, The One Show, featuring the Rising Star Award, in the Sun (Catering Team Champions) and on Heart (Community & Kindness) in June.