Oak National Academy and the British Nutrition Foundation Supporting Food Teachers
By Sam Booth - Oak National Academy Subject lead for Design and Technology
& Frances Meek - The British Nutrition Foundation Education Services Manager
Embedded Files
In early 2024, Oak began collaborating with the Design & Technology Association to create the primary and secondary D&T curriculum. Through the Association, Oak also started collaborating with the British Nutrition Foundation to focus specifically on Cooking and Nutrition.
Over the past 18 months, Oak has worked closely with the British Nutrition Foundation to develop a free, fully resourced Cooking and Nutrition curriculum. This curriculum based on the British Nutrition Foundation’s flagship education programme, ‘Food – A Fact of Life’. Through diverse recipes, this curriculum develops practical food skills and an understanding of healthy, sustainable diets.
We’re excited to share with you more about the journey and the resources and support available to teachers and their pupils.
Oak has come a long way since the pandemic. We aim to support teachers and improve pupil outcomes, especially for the most disadvantaged. We know that time is one of a teacher's most precious resources, whether it’s getting back weekends or focusing on curriculum development.
Our overarching curriculum principles form the foundation of all Oak curricula.
Substantive knowledge (e.g., healthy eating, food science) is taught progressively, while procedural knowledge is built through practical cooking lessons. These lessons enable pupils to plan, prepare, make and evaluate dishes. Vocabulary is mapped across the curriculum, with new keywords shown in bold.
Progression is built over the 108 lessons, using 'threads', such as health, sustainability, hygiene, and food culture, to link learning. Our curriculum's careful and purposeful sequencing ensures that pupils can build on and link existing knowledge across years and phases.
The curriculum is based on the ‘Food - A Fact of Life’ education programme and the research undertaken into effective food and nutrition teaching and learning approaches, teacher training, and good practice in UK schools. We have considered government guidelines, ingredient choice, seasonality, costs and key nutritional messages in over 60 diverse recipes.
We have provided everything you’ll need:
curriculum plans and explainers, showing the thinking behind our curriculum
slide decks chunked into learning cycles with regular checks for understanding
quizzes to frame the learning at the start and check understanding at the end of lessons
worksheets to support tasks
recipes that can be edited and amended to suit school’s and class’ contexts
additional teacher materials containing information on ingredients, equipment, methods, health and safety
bite-sized demonstration videos - food skills are modelled using short, chunked demonstration videos to support explanations
and blogs to support teachers with the practicalities of teaching cooking and nutrition.
You can use as much or as little as you like; everything is fully adaptable. Teachers can tailor recipe ingredients to school budgets, pupil skill levels, equipment availability, dietary needs and timetabling.
We celebrate diversity through cooking experiences and references to various cultures, allowing pupils to expand their food horizons. Pupils are taught about food and cuisines from around the world. Food examples and recipes are diverse, introducing pupils to unfamiliar foods, customs and traditions. A social commentary is woven throughout lessons – exploring the wider socio-economic role of food in our lives. There is a focus on the diverse nature of food, cuisine, culture, custom, and heritage, and how these influence personal food choices. Examples include, in year 7 pupils can learn about growing, rearing and catching our food and make yakisoba noodles, and in year 8, pupils learn about macronutrients, fibre and water.
Our resources focus on clear explanations and modelling, including food skills videos - for example in the year 5 lesson about making a poke bowl, there are demos on peeling, the bridge hold and the claw grip - frequent checks for understanding, and guided and independent practice. Lessons are chunked into learning cycles, and images and information are minimised to manage cognitive load. We use accessible fonts, colours with good contrast, and captions in our videos.
There's a lot of support for schools to implement the curriculum through slide decks, additional materials, and blogs. In addition, from September 2025 to February 2026, the British Nutrition Foundation will be running 10 teacher CPD sessions designed to help teachers quickly get to know the new materials, plan confidently, and empower their pupils.
Teachers can book as many or as few free online webinars as they like. An interactive CPD planner and decision tree help you decide which sessions will be most useful. There are also tools and guidance notes to explore the Oak curriculum and lessons, interactive tools, decision trees, and guidance notes to audit and plan your curriculum and SMART goals!
We hope you can join us on our continuing journey to support teachers, help pupils learn to make informed choices, and celebrate food as nourishment, culture, and joy.
To book the free online webinars run by the British Nutrition Foundation, click here
To visit our KS1 curriculum resources, click here
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