Food and Nutrition is a brand-new subject here at Stuart Bathurst, and is recognised as an integral part of our curriculum. It is imperative for students that they are taught about healthy diets and lifestyles and have the skills to cook balanced meals for themselves and their families. In our urban community, some students do hold food and nutrition in high regard. However, other students have very limited knowledge of where their food comes from and how it is produced. A surprisingly high number of students have restricted diets because of their exposure to multicultural foods, fresh fruit and vegetables and family mealtimes has not challenged them to develop their palette or think deeply about where their food has come from or how it has been made. Wednesbury, West Midlands is an ethnically diverse community so our teaching deliberately draws upon cultural influences from cuisines around the world, as well as supporting British Values. 

The curriculum has been structured to provide a rich knowledge about diet and nutrition, food science, food safety, food provenance and the choices people can make surrounding food. Subsequently, students are encouraged to develop their understanding of the world around them and make cross curricular links with other subjects. Our aim is to enable students to go on to make informed decisions and challenge their thinking about the food they consume.  

Our goal is for students to acquire the skills needed to be able to confidently cook meals and key recipes, from fresh ingredients, independently. As students’ progress through the curriculum, these skills become more challenging and require students to draw upon prior learning and practice to achieve more complex, and exciting recipes. Recipe choices are predominantly savoury and hand-picked to support the current government guidelines for better health to promote healthy eating. We strive to achieve the requirements set out in the DT National curriculum and our decisions are guided by the Food Standards Agency ‘Core Competencies for Children and Young People Aged 5 – 16’ (2007). 

At KS4 we off a GCSE in Food Preparation and Nutrition that can lead students to further study, training or employment. There are multiple employment opportunities locally in a range of industries related to food making the students' studies highly relevant to their lives now and in the future. Birmingham and the West Midlands is a national hub for food production. There are opportunities for students to work in catering and hospitality, retail and manufacturing, science and medicine, technology, journalism and business and marketing.  

We seek to stretch and challenge our most talented chefs and work with charities to enter students for local and national cooking competitions such as Future Chef. We also aspire to deliver extra-curricular clubs to students to develop their practical skills beyond those covered in the main curriculum.