Jamie's School Dinners — The Campaign

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Jamie's Manifesto

Jamie's new six-point plan to improve food for Britain's children

Make cooking and life skills classes compulsory for ALL kids so they learn about food and good eating habits while they’re young. Our kids need to be equipped to understand food, cook and shop on a budget, which are essential life skills.
Recruit and train new cookery teachers, otherwise the new entitlement to cookery lessons won’t be able to happen.
Empower heads to make every school a junk-free zone.
Educate parents and help them to understand the basics of family cooking and responsible nutrition.
Invest in dinner ladies with proper training and appropriate, paid hours to cook food and not just re-heat junk.
Commit to a ten-year strategic plan and fund a long-term public campaign to get people back onto a proper diet and empower/persuade (and possibly scare, if needed) the public into making better choices.

Jamie's Manifesto - Dinner ladies

DINNER LADIES - Skills training for the nation's school cooks.

Many dinner ladies still don't seem to get money filtered down to them to pay for any extra hours they need to cook proper meals from scratch. They're also not getting any proper training yet. In the summer, The Prime Minister asked me what was still needed to train up our dinner ladies and get them motivated again. Here's a summary of what I asked for:

Set up a network of training kitchens by next autumn and get all head cooks trained up as quickly as possible.
Teach the girls how to cook. Refresh their skills and revive their confidence in the kitchen. Teach them about the new standards so they're equipped to deliver them.
Make sure the course becomes a recognised qualification and that at least one person in every kitchen has been on it. Use it as a foundation course for further career training, like an NVQ.
Set up a network of mentors to follow up and help the girls put the new standards into practice.
Ensure there's a national training centre to train the trainers.
Train other people, like heads, governors, teachers and catering managers too.
Find £2 million to fund the set up.

Find out more about Jamie's manifesto for:

www.jamieoliver.com/schooldinners/

Find out some basic facts about school dinners

Are you concerned about your child's school dinners? Do you know what they serve? Do you know who to talk to or even who's in charge?

Channel 4 has produced a fantastic downloadable action pack specifically for parents.

We've got lots of advice on finding out about the quality of your child's school meals, ways to start a campaign for change and some simple ways to improve your child's general diet.