Helping schools achieve a clean bill of health
Over the years some of UK’s leading independent schools have won a prestigious CAP (Continuous Advancement Programme) Award in recognition of their housekeeping and/or catering teams.
Recent winners include Roedean Girls’ School, Harrogate Ladies’ College, Stafford Grammar School, Bishop’s Stortford College, Oakham School and Hollygirt School.
All of these schools would agree that winning either a Bronze, Silver or Gold CAP Award has differentiated them from the competition, allowed them to clearly demonstrate the quality of their pastoral care in terms of cleaning and food, and crucially evidenced the quality of service being experienced by the pupils.
So what makes a winner?
Top of the list is always attention to detail. Excellent housekeeping requires meticulous focus on a multitude of daily tasks to ensure that a high standard is always maintained.
Secondly we’re looking for evidence of good practices. In the kitchens this would mean safe food practices in operation such as HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point) and training on mandatory and daily tasks.
Cleaning procedures should have set daily, weekly and annual time slots, for instance there should always be daily room cleans of soft furnishings and a plan in place for effective mattresses and pillow management (in boarding schools).
The financial health and viability of the housekeeping department is an important award criterion. The feedback at this stage can also provide invaluable insight to improve budgetary management.
We’re looking to ensure that schools are getting great value for money from their materials and staffing, against industry benchmarks.
Awards inspectors want to see astute financial practices at work from controlling waste food in kitchen production, at service and on plate returns, to the strict stock control of cleaning materials and disposable products, i.e. bin bags.
Beyond having the best procedures and systems in place, winning schools demonstrate high performance based on actual real-life delivery. So how clean is the school on the day of the inspection, what do the pupils think of the food on offer that day, is it the right temperature, taste and nutritional balance?
Head teachers have told us that members of the housekeeping and catering teams take great pride from winning an award and the recognition they receive is wonderful for staff motivation and retention.
The achievement of the award is very much the start of the journey of continual improvement in the housekeeping and catering functions.
A longer version of this article will appear in Independent Education Today magazine on March 20th.