2024 School Leader Food Hero Miss Hackett, New Lubbesthorpe Primary School, Leicestershire
Miss Hackett has a vision of what good looks like, and is determined to achieve it at New Lubbesthorpe Primary School.
She understands how important food is to children’s education, in particular ensuring they know where it comes from. Plus, she realises its power, being passionate about creating positive memories for her students through the joy of food.
The kids look after bees and chickens on site, which both provide the kitchen with ingredients. They also work with the BeansMeal project, which involves linking the children and school community with farms, scientists, growers and recipe developers.
Miss Hackett’s teaching staff is all trained in food education, cooking and growing, so they can easily and knowledgeably engage the kids in this topic, plus they host teachers from other schools to help train them up, too.
She is such a visionary, she’s now sharing her wealth of food education knowledge with other schools in the multi-academy trust. This means that even more children and communities will benefit from healthy eating in a sustainable way.
Miss Hackett is a shining example of what good leadership is – and we hope she can help transform the future of schools.
Celebrity judge Seema Pankhania says, “I am astonished by the work Miss Hackett has done prioritising food, growing it onsite and even keeping chickens and bees in the school garden. The pupils are involved in all aspects, from growing to cooking, and even making honey from their bees! They all have such an interest in it and it’s brilliant to see young children given these tools and equipped with amazing life skills.”
ALL CHILDREN NEED TIME OUTSIDE. OUR GARDEN HAS CREATED AN EDUCATIONAL SPACE THAT’S REALLY CALMING
Miss Hackett
Miss Hackett is the inspiring headteacher at New Lubbesthorpe Primary School in Leicestershire, who has such a creative school set-up, complete with working garden, beehives, chickens and a local market stall, it’s the definition of a community hub
How did you feel about winning the award?
I was surprised and so proud. But this is not just about me; it’s such a team effort, including Katie from Food For Life at the Soil Association. You can be a visionary and have ideas, but a lot of seeds were planted before I took on the leadership here. Part of the school’s design was always to have a good-sized garden, enabling us to be sustainable – I’ve just continued with that mantra. Food and sustainability is really integrated into all of our curriculum, because it’s important to the children, and they’re at the heart of everything we do. Their faces light up with amazement when they get stuck into looking after the chickens or helping in the garden.
Do you find the kids love learning the practical skills needed to look after the garden, chickens and bees?
Absolutely! It’s brilliant watching the chickens grow and collecting the eggs, it’s been so exciting for the children – and us adults! In fact, I’ve never seen chickens quite like them, because they go on their backs for the children to tickle their bellies! The garden is so integral to the whole curriculum – I didn’t just want the kids to think about the pastoral side of looking after the chickens – the habitats and what chickens need – but also the science behind the life cycle. And the children have had to cope with death, because chickens don’t live forever! There was a time when we were worried that children only knew about supermarkets, and didn’t know where their food comes from – well, ours certainly do.
You work very closely with your local community, don’t you?
We’re a brand new town, and once a month we have a market run by the parish council. We have such a lovely community. We try our best to find ways of working together, so one time we did a sunflower seed project with the kids, where the parish council supplied a sunflower seed for every child and, if they wanted to, they could come to the market and plant it. We’ve taken it a step further now that we have enough produce to start selling on the market, so the school has a stall, which is run by this amazing lady called Sarah O’Hara, who works tirelessly in the allotment, getting it all ready. I cannot do it without people like that. I can’t get a garden to look as amazing as it does without a little bit of help. So it’s that joined-up thinking that seems to be working in this new town. It really is [the case] that everyone’s open to ideas and new ways to work with food, gardening, wellbeing and education.
The opportunity for the kids to get outside makes all the difference, doesn’t it?
All children need it. You can say that children need it for wellbeing, or for educational needs, but actually, all children need time outside. And what the garden has created over time is an educational space that’s really calming. We want to develop that further, where children can go and learn there too. Then we have the wormery in the composting, and the beehives. They work into the science curriculum for the Year 5 class. And the children are so intrigued. We talk about how different plants and flowers can change how your honey tastes. They scrape the honey off themselves, in their bee suits, all overseen by the bee farmer. Then when they get to Year 6, they take a pot of honey home. It’s quite amazing. It’s another level of understanding how the environment and bees work, and that’s really special.
How are you expanding?
There’s so much scope to do more with the local community. A retirement home is just being built next door to us, and we can’t wait for them to move in. The residents are even coming to our summer fair! There will be people in there who will have loved looking after a garden and might want to help with ours. I think we could start really building those relationships. There’s something special about getting the oldest and youngest generations together. We want to make lovely memories for them, singing for them at Christmas and making them cards.
Where did your passion for this come from?
I think it’s a team passion! I think it stems from my own childhood. I really didn’t like food, fruits and vegetables. It was a traumatic period. So I was determined to make it different for these kids. Where you’re growing it, understanding it, but also touching it and feeling like they’re part of it. It creates a feeling of safety, so kids feel more confident to try it. The more you do it collectively together, it makes you think more about food. Once you start tasting foods, that’s when you start to really enjoy it. That’s where the passion came from, that I want to instil in children from a young age that health and cooking from raw ingredients is actually the best way.
Do the kids love cooking too?
I’ve had to put more cooking sessions on, because the kids love it so much. We’ve got children that cook and say, ‘I’m going to make sure my mum and dad have this when I get home’ – they’re so caring. Children know what’s going on in the world. They know that there’s people less advantaged than them. We’re instilling in them at an early age that actually we can make a difference if we all work together.
What advice would you give other schools?
I’ve always said that food can’t be a bolt-on subject. It’s got to be embedded in all the other subjects, like design technology, personal health development, science lessons. Then it’s not so easy to take it out because you’re too busy. We’re always asking ourselves how we can fit more in, how we can celebrate food elsewhere. Working with our Food For Life contact has been so helpful, and we’re lucky to have generated funds.
Also, don’t forget you don’t need a big garden to grow things – we did a potato competition outside our classrooms. All the children grew them in grow-bags, then they all made something to eat from their harvests, which the parents tasted. It was so much fun, and brought everyone together. It’s the awe-and-wonder moment that you need – it’s how you bring everyone on the journey with you. Find out what your children’s interests are, what they need, and then go from there. Perhaps it’s about eating healthily, or learning how to cook, or how to grow your own. A little project is the best way to start.