Farfield shortlisted for a prestigious national award
We have just found out that Farfield has been shortlisted for a prestigious TES School Award: Healthy School of the Year. This is in recognition of our work around food, farming and physical activity. We are very pleased for this national recognition of our work in these important areas!
Some of the nomination text read:
“Innovative PE, healthy eating, growing fruit and vegetables and a positive attitude to cooking from scratch are all embedded in the heart of our school and have been for a decade.
As we celebrate the tenth anniversary of our huge Farfield Farm project, we are delighted to have expanded the reach of our programmes by welcoming all Y2 children onto the farm for regular year-round activity for the first time and we have extended our comprehensive, regular cooking and nutrition curriculum to now include KS1 as well as our juniors. We have also enthusiastically partnered with The Real Junk Food Project to educate children about food waste and make perfectly-edible supermarket food available to families on a Pay as you Feel basis rather than ending up in land-fill.
The key to our bid is scale and regularity: these aren’t activities that only a few children experience now and then. Everyone from Y2 upwards works regularly on the farm (300 children every half term); every child from Y1 upwards takes part in a cooking curriculum every half term (360 children); every child in the whole school (460+) gets to share the experience of sowing, harvesting and eating food grown on site. The children see the full cycle: sowing seeds, caring for plants and animals, harvesting crops and then cooking and eating it. Families engage with the waste food stalls every week, some have allotment plots on our farm and many attend food-related events such as our Y1 soup kitchen.
Similarly, our innovative approach to PE gives everyone the chance to experience new, exciting sporting opportunities that they can then pursue out of school time. All our children benefit from a wealth of partnerships with sports clubs, facilities and coaches. Our organisation of PE is, to our knowledge, unique and our minibuses are seen out and about almost every day taking children to the best local sports facilities and coaches.
Our aim is to produce happy, healthy young people with positive attitudes to eating, physical activity and their environments. The photos and testaments on our blogs and case studies suggest that we are succeeding.
“The children all did so well making the soup! Thank you for inviting us to come and join in the tasting. Both soups were really yummy and packed with lovely veg. The farm is such a wonderful resource to have on-site. Vaughn really enjoyed the day.” “Sonny has really enjoyed getting stuck in and helping out at the farm this week – it’s a great learning experience.”
“Ruby had a great time learning all about bees and told us some really interesting facts. She thought the honey was delicious!”
“The Parsnip soup was absolutely delicious. Also, the bread with Parmesan cheese was nice and crunchy.”
There were also two supporting documents:
Parents might not realise that there is a cooking blog that includes recipes for KS2 and a chance for comments to be left.
It will be very hard to win this award but our work has clearly caught the eye of the judges and we should be proud of what our school offers! A small group of staff will be off to London in June for the glitzy awards ceremony.
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Huge congratulations and good luck!
Lots of luck at the awards! The school deserves the recognition but above all though it’s teaching the children a great ethos for life!
Brilliant! Well done all, very proud.
Great news! Best of luck!
Wonderful to read. Our friends are constantly in awe of the wide innovative provision at FFPS. My eldest is now Year 7 and mixing with children from a great number and variety of primary schools; she’s yet to find one that comes anywhere close to the FFPS standard.
Great to see the great work at Farfield being recognised nationally. Hope the do in June is good!
Fantastic news good luck Farsley farfield!!!!!!
Many congratulations. Well deserved!