Healthy Eating at Heart of England

There is great deal happening at lunchtimes in 2008. School meals with Solihull Catering Services (SCS) are amongst the best served throughout the borough, and the meals served here at Heart of England School are no exception. In fact we are very proud to work in close partnership with Heart of England School where together we have produced an efficient and consistent service. We work with students through regular student council meetings enabling us to deliver a tailor-made service, to meet the demands of students, parents and teaching staff.

The addition of the new Internet Café will give us the opportunity to serve students sandwiches, baguettes, salad pots and drinks in a separate space away from the main service area. This will help to alleviate some of the pressure and time spent in queues at lunchtime presently. The Internet Cafe has a continental bistro ambiance and to compliment this we will shortly be offering a full range of continental style coffee’s and hot chocolate.

Breakfast club remains a firm favourite at Heart of England (please see our menu tariff). This is a quiet time of the day, where students can meet and enjoy a hot drink and breakfast with their friends before the start of the school day. The long term health and learning benefits of breakfast have been proved in numerous recent studies, and can help students to form good eating habits for life.

We are very conscious about queuing time at Heart of England School and the need for students to make the most of their lunchtime without the need to spend most of their time waiting to be served. It is with this in mind that the introduction of a “Grab N’ Go” service has been implemented, so that students can pre-order their lunch and pay for it at breakfast time, and then visit the pick up point at lunchtime to collect their order. E-payments continue to be a successful addition to the service, where parents/carers can credit student accounts online or via the telephone from home. This will eliminate the need for students to carry cash to school, while giving parents control over money allocated for meals.

A new set of nutritional standards will come into effect in secondary schools in September 2009; this will compliment the government’s standards for school food which we have been using successfully at Heart of England for some time. These standards encourage better eating habits amongst our youngsters that will stand them in good stead and help them to maintain good health as they grow up. Our menus are different everyday and include fish, meat and vegetarian options to ensure we cater for everyone. In addition to this we can produce foods for students who have special dietary or cultural needs, please talk to your catering Mrs Envine about this.

Please feel free to talk to us at any time about the service we provide or concerns you may have regarding your child’s diet, directly to the school kitchen 01676 536711, or to the Group Manager for Secondary Schools: Richard Wainwright on
0121 742 5166.