Our new five-year Strategy to create a happier, healthier future for every child

The new Strategy sets out a bold vision to transform school food and food education across England so that we can help unlock a happier, healthier, more sustainable future for every child. We sat down with Stephanie Slater, Founder and Chief Executive at SFM, to discuss our new priorities, why they matter, and the impact this work will have.

How does it feel to launch this ambitious new plan into the world?

Exciting! The strategy is the result of about six months of collaborative working. This involved a series of workshops covering our theory of change, partnerships, our values, and EDI, culminating in Strategy Day in November. Trustees, staff, volunteers and freelancers from across the country gathered at a beautiful vineyard in Sussex which proved to be the perfect setting for creative thinking.

What will be SFM’s key priorities over the next five years?

We have five priorities. We remain a campaigning charity, and we will continue to push for policy change to transform the school food system so that it works for every child. But after five years of rapid growth, we’re now thinking about scaling our impact, working smarter in order to reach more children in more schools. This doesn’t necessarily mean becoming a big charity. The beauty of being relatively small is being able to respond quickly to opportunities and have lots of space for creativity. So alongside policy change, which remains our number one priority, we’re committed to preparing our small but mighty charity for scale, developing local partnerships across the country, kickstarting a food education revolution, and helping schools to get better food on every plate.

How does this new Strategy differ from the one we’ve been working towards over the past five years?

Over the past five years, through our work with Impact on Urban Health, we’ve dug deep into the complexity of the school food system by working in hundreds of schools in different settings. We’ve developed, tested and adapted our Nourish programme in London schools and we now feel confident to take the programme across the country. Alongside our work on school food transformation, we have our tried and tested and much-loved food education programmes to offer. And by using the robust evidence gathered from working with schools, children and their families, we can develop compelling campaigns to drive policy change. So I guess we’re consolidating everything we’ve learned from the five years of our last strategy to target our efforts most effectively to scale our impact.

Why is now a pivotal moment to fight for equal access to nutritious school food, health, and food education for every child?

A new government brings new opportunity! One of SFM’s core values is optimism, so we can’t help but be a bit excited about the prospect of a government with fresh ideas and approaches.  School food and children’s health aligns so well with Labour’s missions and we’re determined to help this government tackle health inequalities and deliver the happiest and healthiest generation of children ever.

What are the key ingredients that will help make our 2025–2030 Strategy a reality?

I’d say partnership working is key alongside mobilising the children, young people and families we serve. We’ve seen the power of collaborating with charity partners through our work on the School Food Review. School Food Matters has unique access to the schools that benefit from our programmes, so if we can bring policy development and the voices of our beneficiaries together, we have a better chance of making change happen. And we’ll continue to work with academic partners on research projects to further our campaigns. Our work with the University of Hertfordshire on Adapt-Ed has shown us how to adapt our approach to school food improvement in special schools. We’re now working with the University of Birmingham to consider how to make the school food system work better in secondary schools. Both projects will use insights from senior leaders in schools, children, and young people to inform the work.

Working with decision-makers will be key to achieving our goals. What policy and societal changes should we focus on over the next five years?

Equity is one of our core values and this new strategy is underpinned by our commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion so we must work hard to tackle the shameful inequity that exists in our current school food system. In the UK, we should be so proud of establishing one of the oldest school food systems in the world, yet it’s evolved into a two-tiered system that stigmatises children from low-income families and excludes too many children living in poverty. Currently, access to school meals is determined by a family’s postcode or pay packet. This makes no sense when children, by law, are required to be in school 190 days a year. It’s time to stop faffing around with thresholds and patchwork policy and make good food available to every child so they have the good nutrition they need to reach their full potential at school.

This goes for food education too! If we want to see the healthiest generation of children ever, we need to give them the skills to feed themselves well - to leave school with an informed and positive relationship with food. Food education needs a makeover with funding and expertise to make food lessons engaging and meaningful.

And, of course, today’s the first day of the government’s universal primary school breakfast programme. Any programme that sees more children receiving the good nutrition they need to thrive is a good programme, so we’ll be supporting throughout this year’s early adopters pilot, whilst keeping a close eye on the quality of the food served.

What goes through your mind when you think about how far we’ve come - from working in one school in London to now delivering fun, hands-on food education to 40,000 children nationwide?

I wonder whether it’s really been 17 years! School Food Matters has reached this moment owing to the passion, commitment and awesome talent of its team. We can reach big numbers now, not because we’ve grown into an enormous charity, but because together we’ve developed programmes that work and can be scaled effectively. So far, we have now taken our programmes to 2,750 schools across 14 cities. With 24,453 state-funded primary, secondary and special schools in England, we still have a long way to go, so the next five years will be about testing our programmes in different communities across the country, gathering evidence and, of course, the big win will be changing policy.