Soho Parish School Soho Parish CofE Primary School, Westminster, London
An inner-city primary school, where pupils come from a wide range of countries and cultures, Soho Parish School is rated as a 'good school' by Ofsted. Despite the very cramped site, the school offers a high standard of education in a diverse community. When the school decided to take catering in-house, Eagle Solutions Services was approached to help. The first priority was to create a kitchen. ESSL suggested using a small room adjacent to the main hall as the kitchen, and a similar sized room on the floor below for storage and food preparation. |
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 These two rooms are linked by an internal lift, to make the in-house catering process even easier. During the 6 week summer holidays, the new kitchen and store/preparation room were created, so that at the start of the school year, the in-house service was up and running. |
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 In addition, ESSL recruited the cook and other staff needed and provided support in implementing the vegetarian menu requested by the parents and school governors. They had decided that a vegetarian menu would be the best way to meet the demands of varying cultural backgrounds. As the vegetarian menu on its own would not have complied with the Food Based Nutritional Standards, the School Food Trust was consulted as to how best to do this. |
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In consultation with ESSL, the cook devised vegetarian versions of typical international dishes, which have proved popular with the children. For example 'frog-in-the-hole' is a particular favourite, as are baked potatoes with different fillings, fish dishes such as tuna bake and fish cakes with sweet chilli sauce. A range of salads is on offer, as also puddings, with banana cake, followed by fruit salad, coming top of the list with many pupils. The number of pupils taking school meals jumped from around 50 to almost all on the school roll of 145. Through the school council, pupils can make suggestions to the cook, and meals are now embedded in the children's education. |