Food Preparation and Nutrition

Curriculum Intent

At The Eastbourne Academy, the Food Preparation and Nutrition curriculum plays a crucial role in equipping our students with the knowledge and skills required to create, cook, and evaluate their own nutritious dishes. With a focus on a range of cultural backgrounds, our curriculum aims to inspire and challenge students to develop independence and positive curiosity around the different foods available to them.

By fostering an interest and love of food, learners acquire knowledge to make informed decisions about food and nutrition, enabling them to feed themselves and others affordably and nutritiously now and later in life. Through this curriculum, we strive to produce confident, independent, and happy individuals with a passion for learning who can apply the principles of food science, nutrition, and healthy eating to become successful learners and members of society. By providing students with the opportunity to create and evaluate their dishes, we are building cultural capital and encouraging respect for diverse culinary traditions.

The department supplies the ingredients to cook with and take away containers for all students to carry food home. This is to support busy parents in saving time and money by buying ingredients in bulk and having everything ready for students when they enter the lesson. Parents pay for ingredients on ParentPay.

Curriculum Information

KS3

KS3 students have a double lesson once a week focussing on cooking, nutrition and the science behind cooking. The students participate in a rotation with Design Technology. Students will have two seven-week double periods in food across the year where they learn to cook a repertoire of mainly savoury meals.

KS4

KS4 students are studying AQA GCSE in Food Preparation and nutrition. Taking on new challenges such as cooking meals from other cultures, making different pastries and boning a whole chicken. In Year 10 students spend six periods a fortnight in Food, two hours every fortnight practising their cooking skills, and four hours gaining knowledge and exam preparation. Students' GCSE portfolios are completed electronically on laptops and marked electronically. KS4 students have an additional written folder for exam theory preparation. In year 11 students complete two NEA tasks worth 50% of their GCSE. The first is a food investigation where Students' understanding of the working characteristics and functional and chemical properties of ingredients are tested. The second is a Food preparation assessment. Students' knowledge, skills, and understanding in relation to the planning, preparation, cooking, presentation of food, and application of nutrition related to the chosen task. Students will prepare, cook and present a final menu of three dishes within a single period of more than three hours, planning in advance how this will be achieved.

Enrichment

In KS3 students can join the cooking club which runs for five weeks each term focusing on different types of cooking. KS4 students can attend weekly revision or NEA catch-up sessions. Students are encouraged to enter competitions such as Chef of the Year and Swalefeast. Y9 also has the opportunity to participate in a Food walking tour in London.