Food

Curriculum Intent

 1. Curriculum Design

-     The ‘formal’ curriculum for Food Preparation and Nutrition at Chailey School is designed to teach students how to cook and apply the principles of nutrition and healthy eating.  Students are taught how to cook a variety of predominantly savoury dishes using a range of cooking techniques, how to prepare food in a safe and hygienic manner and how to observe the recommendations of Government guidelines on healthy eating. 

-     Food Preparation and Nutrition is taught across a three-year key stage 3 (total 27 weeks, 9 weeks each year) and a two-year key stage 4.

-     All students are able to access the resources, learning and outcomes in Food Preparation and Nutrition through carefully planned projects.  These incorporate a range of structured and differentiated tasks and resources (including provision of ingredients for PP students) that will help support all students to engage with the subject matter.

 2. Coherence and continuity

-     The intent of the curriculum in Food Preparation and Nutrition aligns with the overall curriculum intent of Chailey School

-     By the end of Key Stage 3, students are expected to know how to choose food wisely and eat healthily in accordance with Government guidelines and be able to prepare a range of dishes having learnt a variety of food preparation skills (life skills).

-     By the end of Key Stage 4, students who take the subject at GCSE level are expected to have learnt practical cooking skills whilst developing a thorough understanding of nutrition, food provenance and the working characteristics of food materials.

-     To achieve this, the curriculum in Food Preparation and Nutrition is planned in coherent sequences of lessons – knowledge, skills and understanding will be built on and applied in a cumulative manner

-     Assessment, testing of knowledge, skills and understanding, and effective feedback on this will support this – further details of this can be found in the school’s and subject’s Feedback Policy.

 3. The ‘Informal’ curriculum

-     Food Preparation and Nutrition contributes [much] to the school’s ‘informal’ curriculum – the experience and opportunity for students in Food Preparation and Nutrition is not just about set of exam results, very important though those may be.

-     Key opportunities for this include the annual interform bake-off competition, practical food preparation tasks on drop down days in curriculum enrichment week, a year 10 trip to High Weald Dairy to enhance learning of primary and secondary food processing and in July 2019 the school hosted The School Food Showdown which was an interactive workshop based on the Ready, Steady, Cook TV programme which taught students about the importance of Healthy Eating through a fun teacher/staff cooking competition.

 4. Building character and values in the curriculum

-     All subjects at Chailey School contribute towards building the character and values of its young people

-     This is achieved through practical cookery lessons where students who are seen to be simply cooking are also using their time management skills, are being creative, are building confidence in their own making abilities, are being independent, are developing practical problem-solving skills and are learning about food sustainability and associated environmental issues.