How Wreay School changed it’s catering services
Wreay School is a very small rural primary school of 43 pupils, which had no facilities to cook lunches on site, so school meals were cooked off the premises, 5 miles away and transported to the school. As the school has limited space lunches are eaten in the classrooms.
With the delegation of school budgets, the subsidy provided to part-fund the school meal provisions in small schools ceased in April 2004, making it no longer viable for the school to continue to ‘buy in’ it’s school meals. The school took part in an HET funded project to explore alternative provision for small schools.
A small kitchen was created to allow food to be cooked on site. The school worked closely with Cumbria Contract Services to achieve these improvements. The project adopted a whole school approach, which contributed to its success.
A survey was conducted among children as part of lessons to discover popular foods that could be included in the new menus. Opinions on soups, salads, and jacket potato fillings, protein items to be served with salads, simple desserts, yoghurts and fresh fruits were gathered.
Questionnaires were sent to parents to see if uptake would increase if provisions were changed.
Menus are now sent home so children can choose what they want to eat for three week periods at a time.
The initial planning commenced in February 2003, and the kitchen was up and running by the September. New equipment was installed in October 2004, which was funded by the Local Authority.
