School Young Chef of the Year Awards

Welcome to the School Young Chef Awards, an innovative and exciting programme of awards for schools, children and families. Every child deserves to learn the basics about food, where it comes from and how if affects their bodies.

Awards

Select the award that you would like more information about below

Younger Chef of the Year

Key Stage 1
Ages 6-7

Young Chef of the Year

Key Stage 2
Ages 9-11

Young Chef of the Year - Ireland

5th and 6th Classes
Ages 10-12

Information about the Awards

These awards focus on celebrating food education in the classroom and giving children hands on practical experience alongside the message that what you eat is closely linked to your health and wellbeing.

Throughout each award children learn chef skills, food hygiene and safety, where food comes from and the importance of food for health. A variety of cooking methods are built into the awards starting with cold foods and progressing to a range of heat based techniques in the Young Chef Award.

These awards deliver basic life skills that are integral to children’s education and development specifically to support their long- term health and wellbeing. 

They cover the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS), Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 National Curriculum for ‘Cooking and Nutrition’, the new statutory Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) and Health Education (2020) and incorporates other curriculum areas such as English, Science, Maths, Geography, ICT and Art and Design.

Each award contains 5/6 stand-alone lessons that can be delivered during an enrichment week, weekly or across a school year. Once signed up schools and teachers get access to the web-based content which includes a scheme of work, resource planner, weekly lesson plans, teaching videos and presentations. Schools also receive printed material, which depending on the award can include copies of our award-winning books ‘No Kitchen Cookery for Primary Schools’ and ‘Now We’re Cooking! Delivering the National Curriculum through Food’, printed pupil journals/stickers and certificates/medals.

The awards are also supported by the College of Medicine and Integrated Health and accredited by the Nutritional Therapy Education Commission (2019-2024).

Please take a look at our 2019/2020 Impact Reports: Limerick Pilot 2019 and UK and Ireland 2019/2020.

Young Chef of the Year Finals

In Fleetwood Lancashire, where the Young Chef of the Year Awards was launched in 2017, Healthier Fleetwood organise a grand final across all schools that deliver the 6 week programme. This is supported by Twelve Restaurant and involves the finalists from the schools recreating their 3 course menu and presenting their food and journals to a team of judges. This model has recently been replicated across Welwyn Hatfield with 9 local finalists competing to become the Welwyn Hatfield Young Chef of 2020.
Where clusters of schools are completing the award holding a final event in collaboration with restaurants and secondary schools is a great opportunity to enable pupils to further develop their skills and confidence and engage parents/carers.

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