Eating habits have social, ecological and health influences, and most of them develop during childhood. As article 24 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) states, children must receive information on health and nutrition. Schools therefore have a duty to offer all pupils fair access to sustainable food, with a view to transforming the situation and helping to reduce social inequalities. The Swiss curriculum includes this education as a theme, without allocating a specific hour in the timetable for pupils aged 4 to 12 years old. In practice little time is devoted to it, and studies show that parents and teachers have little discussion on the subject (Aydin et al., 2022). Faced with these implementation challenges, the project to develop a food education programme for primary schools emerged at the intersection of several Swiss institutions. In this context, several partners were mobilised to reflect on these issues. In addition to scientists, teachers and experts on the subject, a class of 9-10 years old pupils was appointed as a team of expert children, enabling the expertise of the main people involved - the pupils - to be taken into account. A participatory, cross-disciplinary methodology was put in place (Camponovo et al., 2020) to gather the pupils' opinions on the entire development of the programme, from the definition of the themes to the development of the monitoring tools, as well as the graphic design and running of the sessions. A range of innovative methodological tools tailored to children (visual methods, diamond ranking, focus groups, etc.) were used to ensure that children's participatory rights were respected across the 4 dimensions of Lundy's model (2007) (voice, space, audience, influence). This consultation phase will take place during the 2023-2024 school year. This contribution, based on some empirical results gathered during the process, aims to highlight both the advantages and the challenges encountered in our approach. How did the idea of integrating a team of expert children into the project emerge? How was this approach received by the members of the interdisciplinary team working on the project? What conditions and precautions were put in place? In order to draw lessons that can be transferred to another project, we will use field notes taken throughout the process and feedback from team members and children to formulate our thoughts on the effective participation of children in this project.

Aydin, G., Margerison, C., Worsley, A., & Booth, A. (2022). Parents’ communication with teachers about food and nutrition issues of primary school students. Children, 9(4), 510. Camponovo, S., Moody Z., Darbellay F., Berchtold-Sedooka A., & Jaffé, P.-D. (2020). Une approche transdisciplinaire du chemin de l’école : les enfants comme co-chercheuses et co-chercheurs. Dans I. Côté, K. Lavoie, R.-P. Trottier-Cyr (eds), La recherche centrée sur l’enfant. Défis éthiques et innovations méthodologiques (pp. 247-273). Presses de l’Université Laval. Lundy, L. (2007). «Voice» is not enough: conceptualising article 12 of the United Nation convention on the rights of the child. British educational research journal, 33(6), 927-942.