06 January 2026
All of Food For Life’s work is focussed around developing a positive healthy and sustainable food culture. While this work in schools may typically be associated with children’s growing and cooking skills, it takes a truly whole school approach, which means also looking at the dining experience.
Food For Life is responsive and adaptive to the needs of its schools and is continually developing resources on the Learning and Skills portal. This term, the Leicestershire programme officer has delivered specialised support to a school that had highlighted their need to improve cutlery skills at the table.
Through the work of their own School Nutrition Action Group, the Food For Life lead at a Blaby Primary school had identified that the younger children’s lack of correct knife and fork use was consuming a lot of the midday supervisors’ time and energy. This was time and energy that could have been better spent on building relationships, monitoring the quality of packed lunches, and maintaining a calmer dining room atmosphere.
As teachers who see children in the classroom, you kind of assume they know to do this stuff. It was really surprising to me how they were trying to use their knives!
The local programme officer delivered a practical skills workshop to the EYFS children on the how to hold and use their cutlery correctly, and why it’s important to do so at the dining table. This skills workshop can be adapted to suit all year groups.
Using a knife is just a fine motor skill, we absolutely could practice during handwriting time.
It is critically important that school staff and leadership play a role in developing a positive healthy and sustainable food culture and child development. The support staff who work with the children day-to-day were in attendance so they could continue to build on the learning from the day and embed knife and fork practice as part of their continuous provision.
As a result of this cutlery training, they now also have a school-wide framework and script that all staff can use to support children to practice in the dining hall, and resources like posters and certificates to encourage improved behaviours.
Change like this does take time, but it will result in more available midday supervisors and a less frantic dining atmosphere. This fosters a more positive attitude toward the whole lunchtime experience where children slow down, enjoy eating and are more present in this crucial social time, skills that will benefit them for life.
It was great to have that step by step breakdown - I can use those phrases in the hall later today to remind them.
Resources for running the cutlery workshop are available on the Learning and Skills hub of the Schools Award Portal.