HOTSAP gave us a taste for success at Leicester High School for Girls

December 2, 2014

By Alan Whelpdale, Headmaster

The public concern for the quality of school meals is never far from the headlines these days.

Whether it’s Jamie Oliver campaigning in Downing Street or pupils themselves, such as the now famous Martha Payne, blogging about the quality of the food on offer, it’s a spicy topic.

That’s why here at Leicester High School for Girls we are determined to ensure our catering service is of the highest quality.

To help us meet our own high standards we have used the Hotel Services Assessment Programme (HOTSAP).

HOTSAP allowed us to quickly evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of our catering service from Hazard analysis and critical control points through to the catering facilities, and from strategic planning to the student voice.

The insight this produced allowed us to feedback to the Senior Leadership Team and the catering department to agree a plan of action for improvements within a given time frame.

HOTSAP was also a wonderful vehicle to encourage catering staff engagement and to bring their own excellent ideas for service improvement to the forum.

As a Headmaster I’ve always found it crucial, when seeking to implement positive change, to have all parties on one agenda with known responsibilities and deliverables – HOTSAP does just that.

Ongoing monitoring is key to ensuring a continuous quality of catering service and so we re-visit the HOTSAP Assessment each term to chart progress.

It’s also been a fun experience for the pupils with some of them sitting on the Catering Committee for the food tasting session. This is a termly exercise and their food sampling scores show our progress!

Crucially, HOTSAP allowed us to make a capital investment focused on known deliverables, for instance the introduction of a salad bar helped expand the offer to the pupils and add additional healthy options.

The end result for us at Leicester High School for Girls has been a much improved catering function, better engaged and motivated staff, and most importantly delicious and nutritious food!

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