Way to start the day

A primary school has been awarded £1,500 for providing a nutritious breakfast club and gave parents, governors and teachers the chance to learn how to teach children to cook.

On Friday, Newark’s MP, Mr Patrick Mercer, presented the money to Bowbridge School, Newark, on behalf of Kelloggs for having the most nutritious breakfast club in the UK.

They won first place from over 200 entries in the category.

Between 30 and 70 children attend the breakfast club before starting school each morning.

They can get toast or cereal or pay extra and eat eggs, bacon or sausage. It has been running at the school for around ten years and has always been popular.

The head, Mr David Dixon, said the money would be spent on play equipment and reading books for children who attended the club.

Some of the money would be spent on running the club because it was paid for through the school budget and made no profit.

Mr Dixon said that breakfast was really important to enhance children’s concentration levels and learning.

He said: “Good breakfasts help to start the day well and means that we do not have children flaking out during the day.”

A cooking bus visited the school to demonstrate how to provide good quality teaching of cooking techniques to children.

Small groups of children were taken on the bus throughout the day to learn skills including chopping, grating and peeling as well as aspects of healthy eating and food safety and hygiene.

The school also received new sets of equipment, including small cooking appliances like graters, for the children to use when the adult was demonstrating a cooking technique.

Although the school has always taught cooking, more will be put into the curriculum in the next academic year.

Mrs Carol Wilkinson, the school’s budget manager, said the school would consider buying new electric hobs which turn themselves off when a pan was removed.