| School Food Trust | |
|---|---|
| Abbreviation | SFT |
| Formation | 2005 |
| Legal status | Charity |
| Purpose/focus | Works with schools and others to implement the changes needed and to find practical solutions to help schools improve their meals service day-to-day |
| Location | 2 St Paul’s Place Sheffield, UK |
| Region served | UK |
| Chair | Rob Rees |
| Main organ | Board |
| Affiliations | The Prince's Trust, Local Authority Catering Association |
| Website | School Food Trust |
The School Food Trust is a UK Charity and specialist advisor to government on school meals, children’s food and related skills.[1]
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The trust was created in 2005 by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES), following celebrity chef Jamie Oliver's critique of the nutritional quality of school meals in his TV documentary Jamie's School Dinners. It had been found that standards of school food were shockingly low, with inmates in prison having more nutritious food. Average spend per meal before 2005 at secondary schools on ingredients was only around 40p. Childhood obesity is a problem in the UK in specific demographic groups (see National Statistics Socio-economic Classification), with some medical professionals predicting that today's youngsters will have a lower life expectancy than their parents with problems with diabetes and heart disease.
In April 2007 it became a registered charity.
As of April 2011, the Trust will cease to be an NDPB,[2] continuing its work both as a charity and by trading its services through a new community interest company.
The trust is governed by a board appointed by the Secretary of State for Education and Skills, and managed on a day-to-day basis by an executive team. A criticism is that 8 of the 14 board members are either part of the food and catering industry, or close to it.[3] Dame Suzi Leather was appointed as the first Chair of the trust, but resigned a year later when appointed as Chair of the Charity Commission. Baroness Maggie Jones was appointed interim Chair in August 2006.[4]
In November 2006, Prue Leith was named as the chair.[5][6]
In January 2010 Rob Rees was named as the chair after Prue Leith retired her position.[7][8]
The trust was initially funded by a £15 million grant from the Department for Education and Skills, and has been awarded in partnership with organisations including The Prince's Trust, Business in the Community, Magic Outcomes and the Improvement Foundation, £20 million additional funding from the Big Lottery Fund for a network of school children's cookery clubs called Let's Get Cooking.[9][10]
The aim of Let’s Get Cooking is to establish a national network of clubs to give children and non-cooking parents of all ages the skills and confidence to cook nutritious and tasty meals from scratch.
Initially, Regional Training Kitchens were set up to train school cooks in a centralised (with efficiencies of scale) method, which were then named Regional Training Centres. A new name was needed, so it was decided to call these regional training centres the School Food Excellence And Skills Training - with the acronym School FEAST. These can train cooks to the standard of Level 2 NVQ in Professional Cookery and also Food Processing and Cooking.