Free teacher training will help children try fruit and vegetables – here’s how schools can sign up

Published

03.05.2024

Stroud District Council is appealing for schools in the Stroud district that have a high percentage of pupils that have free school meals to apply for free-of-charge teachers’ food education training.

The council has successfully bid for funding from NHS Charities Together to finance the professional training by food educators TastEd for teachers and support staff.

TastEd will provide one hour of training and resources to enable teaching staff to deliver a range of taste education lessons that are closely tailored to the National Curriculum. The sessions help to demystify food education by using a simple and effective training model that has been shown to help children have a positive relationship with food as they try, talk, and write about food.

The lessons are highly engaging and provide children with positive experiences of fruit and vegetables in the safety of the classroom. Educators have found that, when surrounded by their peers, children will often try, and enjoy, a wide variety of new foods.

Research shows that 79% of children in the UK eat fewer than 3.5 portions of fruit and vegetables a day, with one in four children eating three or more unhealthy snacks a day.

Teachers at Cam Everland school who took part in TastEd training reported that the experience was: “very interesting,” “gave me different ideas I hadn’t thought of,” and the programme as “simple but effective.”

SDC can fund three schools to receive a training session, and would particularly like to receive applications from schools with a high percentage of pupils who receive free school meals, or those which would like to focus on providing more food education.

Interested schools can apply for the training by contacting David Rawlings, Stroud District Council’s Children & Young People Development Officer at david.rawlings@stroud.gov.uk

More information about TastEd can be found at www.tasteeducation.com