Opting for Health

Description

This programme visits Southdown Infants school near Bath, which started its own catering business in order to ensure healthy and nutritional dinners for its pupils.

Inspired by the headteacher's belief that additive and fat-saturated meals were responsible for poor behaviour patterns, the governors decided to opt out from their LEA catering provider.

Three years on, the children's concentration and behaviour levels have improved, they are the proud winners of the Soil Association Award for Best School Dinner 2004 and their business is becoming profitable as other schools are keen to buy in food prepared from their kitchens.

We look at:

• The risks of opting out from the LEA provider
• How governors take responsibility for recruitment and health and safety
• How they see the future
• The active role the governors take in raising schools standards
• The practical way they support the vision of the headteacher and help make an idea a reality

Part of the series: Just for Governors