What I do
Paul Aagaard is a director at recipe for change
Around 2005, I was commissioned by the NHS in East Sussex to run a Food in Schools programme and promote school meals. I realised very quickly that talking to children about healthy food was a complete waste of time if they went into a dining room that was noisy and rushed, where their mates didn’t wait for them to finish and where the supervisors were grumpy. I then spent the next 10 years devising and refining a consultation programme around getting lunchtimes right.
A tiny part of lunchtime supervisors’ job should be to monitor hygiene. The major part of their job ought to be to teach what I call the ‘social curriculum’ - to sit with children, role model good manners and use of cutlery. Yes, there’s some cleaning, policing and nursing involved – but their main emphasis should be on teaching, counselling and caring.
Elaine D’Souza – headteacher, Hermitage Primary School
We spend hours in the classroom putting in place rules and expectations so that children know exactly what to do. It used to be that at 12pm, we would open the doors, say ‘Go!’ and not take them in again until 1pm – and they came back feral. Something had to change.
Paul came to our school and pointed out something I hadn’t noticed before – it was a feeding trough, a case of ‘get them in, feed them, get them out.’ What we’ve got now is something much closer to a restaurant. We’ve slowed everything down so that lunch now runs from 11.30am to 1.30pm. with the numbers entering the hall staggered according to their class.
The children come in, a waiter tells them where to sit and everything’s served at the table. The children know that once they’ve sat down they’ve got to eat, and can’t leave until their whole table of six has finished. The hall is split in two halves, A and B, which alternate between being used and cleaned by one of two supervisors. When pupils are sat on their side the supervisor won’t clean, but instead talks to the children.
We have a system where if a child misbehaves they get a white slip. The total number of slips given out in autumn 2016 was 53. In spring this year, just after we’d started the new lunch system, the count was 39. In summer just gone it was down to 10. The data’s there, and it shows our afternoon behaviour incidents have dropped right down.
