In January 2022 Good Food Oxfordshire and Oxfordshire County-Council co-hosted a workshop on school food in the county. Learnings from the workshop have informed the development of the Oxfordshire Food Strategy - a multi-stakeholder strategy presenting a vision for a better food system for Oxfordshire. The strategy will be published in June 2022.

The school food workshop aimed to:

Build stronger connections between school caterers, schools, parents, local authorities, councillors and academics;

Develop a shared understanding of the realities of school catering and the challenges faced by everyone involved in ensuring our children are well-fed during the school day;

Build a better understanding of what has worked to improve the health and sustainability of school food in some settings and the realities of making changes for other schools;  

Explore the challenges and opportunities around the growing movement towards plant-based foods.

Over 40 people attended the workshop representing a wide range of stakeholders. Based on what we heard at the workshop from various stakeholders representing schools, school food caterers, local authorities and public health, we would like to:

1. Build our shared knowledge base about good practice

Specifically, we are interested in hearing about any activities that are already happening around:

Tackling food poverty in schools

Food-related climate action in schools

Healthy eating in schools

Sourcing local food in schools

2. Connect people to support each other

We'd like to design a process that helps connect people by connecting their respective ‘needs’ and ‘offers’. As a peer-to-peer support platform, this process will link up people in need of knowledge and support with specific actions/ areas/ problems with people who can offer the required support/ knowledge/ experience or resources.

If we can gather a better view of the good practice that is already happening we will be able to:

Promote and share best practice and show what is possible;

Create case studies that can inspire others;

Create direct links and connections to support each other. 

To help achieve these objectives and build our shared knowledge base, we invite you to complete a short survey by midday Friday 29 April to indicate your areas of interest, the work that you are already doing, what support you need and what support you can offer others.

If you have you have any further comments or questions please get in touch.