Marlborough Primary School

[Text displayed on screen] Creating a healthy canteen at Marlborough Primary School.  

[Text displayed on screen] Joy Veith, School Council, Marlborough Primary School.  

[Joy Veith, School Council, Marlborough Primary School.] I’m part of the school council at Melbourne Primary School, and we wanted to focus on student health.  

And, wellbeing, we thought, how could we not look at changing our canteen menu?  

[Text displayed on screen] Shaun McClare, School Principal, Marlborough Primary School.  

[Shaun McClare, School Principal, Marlborough Primary School.] The research out there shows us that when kids eat a healthy diet with a wide variety of fruit and vegetables in that diet, they actually perform better in the classroom.  

They’re going to have better concentration, better stamina with their work. And the end of the day means we’ll get better learning results which will impact on them in the long term.  

[Joy Veith, School Council, Marlborough Primary School.] So we put a survey together and we sent it out to the school community, and what came back was that majority of the parents would like to see a lot more healthier foods on the menu.  

[Shaun McClare, School Principal, Marlborough Primary School.] There were a few of the more processed, unhealthy foods that the kids really liked, and they were really popular. So it was about having education for the children.  

And the school council, which comprised of the parents at the school, really led the changes in our menu at the school, and it was really their initiative.  

The key to making sure that everyone was on board with the changes was keeping everyone informed along the way, really trying to make sure that we’re all on the same page about what our end goal was about having healthy food that the kids would enjoy eating.  

[Joy Veith, School Council, Marlborough Primary School.] We had surveys for parents, we had surveys for teachers, and we had surveys for students as well. The students have been involved from the get-go.  

[Shaun McClare, School Principal, Marlborough Primary School.] The students were involved in naming our canteens. Our canteen is called Marlboro munch.  

[Student] My favourite food at the Marlborough Munch is chicken salad wrap.  

[Shaun McClare, School Principal, Marlborough Primary School.] With developing a new menu, is it going to be feasible? Is it going to work? Is there costs involved in actually the development of the menu?  

[Joy Veith, School Council, Marlborough Primary School.] Most of the families were in agreements that the prices needed to raise a little bit so that we can offer the kids more healthier options.  

I think the whole process did have its challenges, but I knew that the outcome would be very rewarding.  

The thing that helped us the most was the food checker particularly helpful when you just wanted to get online and check the details of one particular item, you could log that recipe into the food checker and you could instantly get an outcome as to whether it was an everyday food or a select carefully food.  

I never actually got the question, why are we making these changes? I think because we spoke about it so openly and the surveys went around to the students that there was never a question why.  

The best advice I can give other schools is to work with the school council, make sure that you’ve got their support, communicate to the school community as much as you can, and to keep them in the loop and to also contact the Healthy Eating Advisory Service.  

It’s a great service with lots of great people willing to lead you in the right direction. It’s effective. And they give you great advice in developing good food habits for life for their children. I love healthy food. 

[Text displayed on screen] www.heas.health.vic.gov.au