Much has been made about the health and wellbeing of children in the UK in recent times (Rawlins 2008; Withnall 2013). Specifically, concern has been raised regarding children’s eating habits, the increase in childhood obesity, and children’s lack of knowledge about ‘where food comes from’ (Dimbleby & Vincent 2013). Through recent English government policy (Turning the Tables 2005; The School Food Plan 2013), schools are being made responsible for teaching children about food. Schools therefore increasingly have to navigate between ensuring children are fed, in order to prevent hunger and to allow them to participate in learning; whilst simultaneously educating children about food, and specifically how to eat ‘healthily’ so that they will become responsible and healthy citizens. This presentation reports on a multi-site ethnographic research project that was undertaken in the East Midlands in England in 2012 and 2013 that examined how policy was being translated into the everyday of schools. Three primary schools, located in different areas and socio-economic catchments, participated in the research. The research utilized Sarah Pink’s (2009) sensory approach to ethnography, focused on “creating and representing knowledge” (Pink 2007, p.22) and paying attention to the embodied and emplaced position of the researcher. The research followed food through the school day – from breakfast club to class to break and lunchtimes, to after-school food-related activities. It created a portrait of the foodscape at the various sites. Interviews with school staff involved in food education were conducted. The data were read as a whole corpus and coded thematically, organized in Scrivener. The wider research project found that whilst food education is encouraged in schools, the extent to which schools can create the kinds of experiences described in policy documents (and by celebrity chefs) is intensely varied. This presentation will discuss how schools navigate the complexity of class and community in both food education and food poverty.

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