European healthy pupils and skilled educators via integrated school food systems [EPESS]

Context/background This was a collaborative project spanning 26 months working across 10 partners in the UK, Denmark and the Czech Republic to strengthen cooperation between organisations working towards a common goal to promote health, learning and sustainable development. It facilitated the sharing of knowledge, skills and innovative ways of training educators in schools. In various guises there have been partnerships between FFL, LOMA, SZS, UWE, UCL and partner schools for a number of years. However, EPESS provided the opportunity to formalise these relationships and maximise the work that all partner organisations are doing to improve attitudes towards health and food within schools and education. Led by FFL and supported by UCL/LOMA, SZS and UWE, this programme followed a pattern of blended mobility incorporating school staff exchange programmes, training webinars and evaluation of the teaching methods, best practice learnt and confidence gained. Objectives The aim of the project was to elucidate best practice in improving health and attitudes to food in the school community in order to increase capacity of the partner organisations and empower the partner school participants. The programme enabled sharing and development of new techniques to encourage whole school participation, implementing food activities in schools, the use of IT in encouraging healthy attitudes, sustainable development in schools and new ideas on the role of food in areas of socio-economic deprivation. Participants The immediate beneficiaries were the partner organisations and schools included within EPESS (in particular the people who attended exchange visits) but wider groups have benefited through the sharing of blogs and information about the project. We also anticipate that pupils in the future in the schools involved will benefit from the learning from EPESS now integrated in their school approaches to food. Activities • The EPESS project involved 3 exchange visits supporting participants to visit schools in each of the partner countries. • The EPESS project organised training webinars (sharing learning) and exchange follow-up webinars which enabled consolidation of learning between participants following each exchange visit. • 4 Transnational Project Meetings took place which supported project management and connections between partner organisations Results and outcomes All 6 partner schools engaged in the EPESS exchange visits and were invited to engage in the EPESS training webinars (or to watch the webinars at a later date). Findings from the EPESS evaluation showed that participants learned a lot about various components in the Integrated School Food Systems domains, and were inspired and encouraged to transfer new learning and to change their own practice. In general, the feedback from participants was overwhelmingly positive about the EPESS programme in terms of its organisation, delivery and opportunity to obtain an insight into a wealth of innovative practices in school food education. The programme helped build a community of practice with a group of educationalists with many common interests and shared commitments. The hands-on experiential learning during the exchange visits was seen as vital to feel inspired, obtain depth of understanding and to see practice from the ‘inside’. The programme enabled participants to have dialogue with experts with experience, to take a step back and see the wider educational and social importance of food education, and to be surprised and sometimes challenged by different ways of working. Impact As part of the taking part in the programme, participants identified a number of opportunities for enhancing their food education and practices in school. Practical actions participants have implemented or plan to implement following EPESS include: • Mapping food skills progression for students at each stage of their learning over the course of their school journey. • Stronger focus on parental involvement as central to whole school approaches to food. • Greater use of pedagogical approaches that encourage independent thinking and action, particularly through the use of outdoor activities. • Use of a wider set of ingredients in educational cooking, in particular fish and shell fish. • Reaching out to other nurseries to become more strongly allied to a movement for whole-nursery approaches to food. • Applying the school garden model that makes greater use of volunteer and parental engagement. • Develop projects and resources to link food-based activities to mental wellbeing and physical activity. • Develop the model in which community gardens are closely partnered to local schools. • A stronger focus on the use of outdoor spaces, for example, bee keeping as a new educational resource. • Application of ‘Montessori’ pedagogical techniques to educational cooking.