36 CATERING
rocure lan
where rowdy pupils were shut away, to give teachers some peace and quiet, it now acts as a venue for teachers and children to eat together. This is further facilitated by a cashless catering system. However, its dining room facility wasn’t large
enough to accommodate all the pupils and staff, and so queuing time was a real problem at lunch. The solution was to open a ‘health hut’ dubbed refuel, a satellite ‘grab and go’ food shop in the school playground with healthy hot and cold options for the boys to buy. “This is a bit like the stuff you see on the southbank in London, like Wahaca has the restaurant and then outside they have a hut. Lots of restaurants have the little huts outside and we have one called refuel and we intend on extending that,” says Barber. The school is also open for breakfast – the costs for which are subsidised for children who attend morning homework club. Carshalton’s new-found commitment and
enthusiasm for improving food culture has left Jamie oliver and the Prince of Wales impressed after recent visits and was selected as Flagship school by the Food for Life Partnership. The celebrity chef waxed lyrically afterwards about the school’s achievements, while Prince Charles was so taken by the school, he stayed an extra three- and-a-half hours on his visit, talking to the boys about their food growing. “Jamie oliver went on the television the next
day and said every child has the right to have the quality that Carshalton Boys delivers,” remembers Barber. “i agree with that quote – because i’ve got a boy and there’s nothing more precious than him and i treat every boy at my school as if he was my son. Would i serve up food that wasn’t good enough for my son? Absolutely not and i think Jamie oliver is the same.”
WORTH THE INVESTMENT Barber has so impressed leaders of the healthy school movement, he has been recruited as a champion of Leon’s school Food Plan, helping other schools follow in Carshalton’s path. The school has already run an open day and is doing another one this month.
For Barber, strong leadership is essential to any cultural turnaround in a school, and healthy eating is no exception. “if the headteacher isn’t actually embracing and leading this passion for food, it will not happen,” he says. “so you have to have the leadership team in a school believing in food.” All of this good food, of course, comes at a
cost and other schools have often wondered how the state-funded college manages to pay for all this culinary luxury. “They are barriers that are put in place by people who don’t really believe they can make a difference,” says Barber of the questions he is often asked about funding. “You’ve got a school cook anyway that you’re probably paying £20,000 for, if you have a chef manager, you pay £30,000, so it’s a slight increase, however, what you’ve got there is real talent and a real difference.” it’s this kind of big-picture thinking that sees a school rise from good to outstanding and the once- struggling Carshalton certainly seems headed that way.
september 2013 \
www.edexec.co.uk
Carshalton’s new Refuel ‘health hut’, as delivered by purchasing group Pelican
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