Cumnock Academy’s innovative idea to reduce the amount of good it throws away has won the praise of a local MSP. On a visit to the School, Brian heard from Principal Guidance Teacher Carrie Smith how the school take leftover food from school lunches, package it in meal size portions and let pupils take home as many spare meals as they want.
After being blast frozen overnight, the previous day’s spare food is packaged, labelled and put out after lunch so pupils can collect them as they head home.
Not only does the scheme reduce the amount of surplus food being thrown away at the end of the day, but it’s proved a big hit with pupils including those looking for something that’s easy to cook if they’ve been staying late at school, pupils with working parents, young carers, pupils living on farms working long days helping during lambing season and pupil’s whose family’s finances are tight.
Brian, a South Scotland MSP has been leading calls in Parliament to improve the quality of school meals, increase the number of local ingredients and do more to ensure that pupils have access to a healthy nutritious meal. After visiting Cumnock Academy and seeing their efforts first-hand, the MSP has put down a motion in Holyrood recognising their work and wants to see the project rolled out to schools across Ayrshire and beyond.
Comment from Carrie Smith, Head of Guidance, Cumnock Academy:
“We have now been running the surplus food project for 10 months and it has been a great success. It is brilliant to see so many pupils benefitting from healthy food that would otherwise go to waste. I am really proud of the project and have really appreciated the support from the school and the authority in making the vision a reality. The dream is that every school across Scotland adopts a system to better address their surplus food as putting good food in the bin should not be an accepted option.”
Brian Whittle MSP said:
“Carrie and the team at Cumnock Academy have come up with a great idea to make use of their surplus food that also gives pupils greater access to healthy meals. Eating healthy, high quality meals makes a big difference to a person’s health and it’s been shown to improve attainment in schools too.
I’ve no doubt that this could be of real benefit to pupils across Scotland and I’ll be encouraging East Ayrshire Council and the Scottish Government to consider trialling it in other schools.”
Photo – (L-R) – Morgan Heron (Head girl), Carrie Smith (Head of Guidance), Lorrelle Wallace (catering manager), Brian Whittle MSP, Peter Gilchrist (Head teacher), Evan Burns (Head boy) with examples of the take home meals
