Schools in Stroud can apply for free teachers' food education training.

Stroud District Council has successfully bid for funding from NHS Charities Together to finance professional training by food educators TastEd, for teachers and support staff at schools which have a high percentage of pupils who have free school meals.

TastEd will provide an hour of training and resources to enable teaching staff to deliver a range of taste education lessons, which are closely tailored to the National Curriculum.

The sessions will help to demystify food education, by using a simple and effective training model, which has been shown to help children have a positive relationship with food as they try, talk and write about food.

The engaging lessons provide children with positive experiences of fruit and vegetables in the safety of the classroom. Educators have found that, when surrounded by their peers, children will often try and enjoy a wide variety of new foods.

Research shows that 79% of children in the UK eat fewer than 3.5 portions of fruit and vegetables a day, with one in four children eating three or more unhealthy snacks a day.

Teachers at Cam Everland School who took part in TastEd training reported that the experience was: "very interesting" and "gave me different ideas I hadn't thought of". They added that the programme was "simple but effective."

SDC can fund three schools to receive a training session. It would particularly like to receive applications from schools with a high percentage of pupils who receive free school meals or those which would like to focus on providing more food education.

Interested schools can apply for the training by contacting David Rawlings, Stroud District Council's children and young people development officer at david.rawlings@stroud.gov.uk.