Learning how to cook, and to cook healthily, is a crucial life skill that we teach students so that they will be able to feed themselves and others affordably and safely for the rest of their lives

At its heart, our curriculum focuses on nurturing students' practical cookery skills to give them a strong understanding of nutrition, food provenance and the working characteristics of food materials. Instilling a love of cooking in our students will also open a door to one of the great expressions of human creativity.

Curriculum Aims

Our curriculum aims for Food and Nutrition are framed around the National Curriculum and the exam specifications we follow and is rich, broad and varied.  

Students will learn to understand and apply the principles of nutrition and health and cook a repertoire of predominantly savoury dishes from a range of cultural traditions, so that they will be able to feed themselves and others a healthy and varied diet. 

Through the early KS3 curriculum, there will be a focus on Health and Safety, so our students soon become confident and competent in a range of cooking techniques, including knife skills and applying heat in different ways. 

Through teacher led demonstration and practical lessons students come to understand the source, seasonality and characteristics of a broad range of ingredients, and how to perform sensory analysis of ingredients and outcomes;

Students will be able to make the connections between theory and practice to cement extensive and relevant knowledge and apply their understanding of food and nutrition to practical preparation.  

Over time, our Food curriculum enables our students to be able to make decisions about which techniques are appropriate based on their understanding of nutrition, food, different culinary traditions and cooking and food preparation content in order to achieve their intended outcome.

Curriculum Design

The Food curriculum is designed taking into account recommendations of the National Food Strategy. The aim of our curriculum design is to nurture a love of cooking in our students, partnered with having them make connections between the practical and theoretical elements of their learning. 

Our curriculum is sequenced to keep students safe, to deliver increasing levels of challenge and to inspire excellence and mastery in student.

Our Food curriculum builds upon the starting point of Health and Safety principles. These remain at the heart of all our curriculum content in order to keep learners safe from the risks they face when working with food and with specialist equipment.

Second to this, in Year 7 are the key skills of understanding nutrition and the need for a balanced diet with Year 8 learners then investigating ethical and cultural considerations connected to food choice and food provenance.

Parallel to these key topics students are always learning about the working characteristics of food materials - delivered through tasks carefully designed to also develop a range of practical cookery skills. 

Their learning journey culminates with an application of their knowledge and skills in a practical non examined assessment in Year 11.

Please click the link to view our Food and Nutrition Curriculum Year Overview

Future Pathways and Next Steps 

Through the study of Food and Nutrition we aim to unlock each students' potential and inspire them to achieve excellence by being the best they can be. This can lead to a wide range of future opportunities, some of which include:  

University Degrees: Dietetics and Nutrition, Food Science and Nutrition, Nutrition and Health, 

Apprenticeships: Baker, Chef de Partie, Dietician, Food and Drink Engineer, Maritime Caterer

Careers: Animal Nutritionist, Chef, Dietician, Fitness Instructor, Food Scientist, Herbalist, Nutritionist,  Personal Trainer 

Students can find out more about the subject and careers above by logging into their Unifrog account at https://www.unifrog.org/sign-in and using the Subject Library and Careers Library tools.