HRH The Princess Royal visited the Fish in School Hero Programme on Tuesday 1st October, to discover how it is inspiring the next generation of seafood lovers at Bingley Grammar School and beyond.
The Food Teachers’ Centre programme, funded by the Fishmongers’ Company’s Fisheries Charitable Trust, aims to ensure that every child gets a chance to prepare, cook and eat fish before they leave school, building a new wave of young seafood consumers.
The Princess Royal, Court Member of the Fishmongers’ Company and past Prime Warden, visited classes at Bingley Grammar School where the programme first launched in November 2019. Students from years 10 and 11 demonstrated their newly acquired seafood skills, cooking a range of dishes using mussels, something many students had never before eaten, let alone cooked. The Fish Hero lessons provide students with all of the skills they need to cook mussels at home, whilst also outlining the sustainability and health benefits of UK rope-grown mussels, including low food miles, low environmental impact, biodiversity benefits, and carbon capture potential.
The Fish in School Hero programme works to train secondary food teachers to be confident in preparing and cooking fish with students in their classrooms. Teachers are supported by local heroes: fishmongers, fish-loving chefs and fish suppliers, as well as other heroes who visit schools to talk first-hand about their role in bringing seafood from the sea to the plate, highlighting careers and opportunities in the fish industry.
The classes at Bingley Grammar marked the beginning of this year’s Mussel Power initiative, that will bring mussels to over 8,000 students across 200 schools in November. The programme is supported by Offshore Shellfish, who have kindly donated six tonnes of mussels over the last 3 years, reaching over 24,000 students across the UK. Offshore’s Head of Sales and Marketing Sarah Holmyard, also a member of the Fishmongers’ Company Livery, said “We’re delighted to be able to support the Fish in Schools Hero programme. It’s so valuable to introduce the younger generation to the benefits of sustainable seafood, and mussels are the champion. They’re easy to prepare, quick to cook and delicious to eat.”
Eleanor Adamson, Fisheries Programme Manager at the Fishmongers’ Company said “it was a pleasure to join HRH The Princess Royal at Bingley Grammar School to experience the impact of the Fish in School Hero programme first hand, and see the next generation fall in love with some of the incredible sustainable seafood that the UK has to offer.”
Simon Gray, Programme Lead for the Fish in School Hero programme said : “Mussels are one of the most under-utilised shellfish in this country, so we are getting young people to try them in the safe, positive environment of their food preparation and nutrition lessons. This would not have been possible without amazing industry partners offering to support this initiative greatly reducing the cost to schools. Schools are super excited and hugely grateful for Sarah’s generous gift to enable them to learn new skills and taste quality shellfish.”
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