It is well known that food plays an important part in students’ ability to learn - after all, it’s hard to concentrate if you’re hungry. Logistically, though, it can be a costly and complex area of delivery within schools and trusts.

This is why the process is often outsourced. It was something we did at STEP Academy Trust in the past, too. However, in 2012, when STEP was just two academies, the catering contract for both schools was coming to an end and we were faced with a choice: renew or go in-house.

Given the link between a nutritional lunch and pupil outcomes, we recognised that our catering provision needed to be as high-quality as our teaching, and that this could only be achieved through in-house provision.

Alongside benefits to pupils, we felt this would bring many other advantages, including increased control over food quality, improved responsiveness to pupil need, and the reinvestment of any surplus funds into supporting pupil outcomes rather than going to a third party.

We therefore decided to recruit a catering manager who could manage the transition and ensure the Trust was compliant with legislation on everything from environmental health to food hygiene, school food standards and managing allergies.

Furthermore, catering services for new academies would be brought in-house as soon as contracts ended, with menus, processes and outcomes aligned across the Trust.

Save time, reduce costs

Initially, the day-to-day management of catering staff was still being left to head teachers, with expert support from the catering manager around process, compliance etc.

But in 2018, we questioned the opportunity cost to pupils of a head focusing time on any activities other than teaching and learning, safeguarding and their community stakeholders.

Wouldn’t services like catering, premises, HR and administration have a greater chance of becoming truly excellent if they were overseen by leaders who were as passionate about their specialism as heads are about education?

We therefore embarked on a journey to centralise a range of services, including the entire delivery of catering. Later that year, the STEP Catering Team was born, operating as a discrete department, led by expert managers, all with a passion for the importance of food in supporting great education.

Now, the team of 60 comprises individuals at all levels of their careers, and staff development is the foundation of the service.

We also champion career development: many of our staff began their journey as kitchen assistants before progressing into assistant kitchen manager roles and beyond. In fact, almost all of our catering leadership team is “homegrown”.

Is in-housing efficient, then?

Since doing this, we have been able to:

• Procure ingredients centrally, enabling us to secure the right quantity and quality at the best price.
• Minimise wastage and overproduction.
• Produce free school meals at cost (rather than having to pay “full price” to an external company).
• Link staffing resources closely to meal production, ensuring the right balance between staffing costs and sufficient capacity.
• Use excess capacity to extend our support beyond STEP. For example, we use our economies of scale to provide smaller educational provisions with higher-quality and lower-cost lunches than they could otherwise manage.

What about your menu?

Another benefit of going in-house is greater flexibility in menu design.

We meet the School Food Standards, but are also inclusive for those children with food allergies, and can ensure that portion sizes meet government guidance.

We maintain three core seasonal menus, which we refine rather than reinvent. Menus and recipes are tweaked as needed, using uptake and pupil satisfaction data to identify which meals are most and least popular.

We also celebrate the skills of our kitchen managers by noting their recipes on the menu, and promote dishes inspired by a range of countries and cultures, celebrating global diversity through food.

To monitor the delivery of excellence, pupil voice is regularly obtained via our “happy or not” surveys, and we are proud of our 90 per cent and above satisfaction rates. Which means plenty of empty plates.

Ben March is chief finance and operations officer at STEP Academy Trust