About Me

Dr Jason O’Rourke

I am a primary school headteacher in the UK and have a doctorate in Food Education and School Leadership. The school that I lead is a 300 place Nursery and Primary school in the UK. In the 12 years that I have been here, the school has gained national recognition for the curriculum it has developed which has put food education and healthy living at the forefront of children’s learning.

The school has created its own children’s kitchen, commercial kitchen, outdoor kitchen, organic vegetable gardens, heritage orchards, wood-fired pizza oven and beehives.  The curriculum allows all children to cook every week and the cookery lessons are published on the academy’s own YouTube Food Channel.

The school are the only in-house school caterer to have been awarded the Soil Association’s Food for Life Served Here Gold Award which recognises our commitment to ethical and environmentally friendly food, making healthy eating easy and championing local producers and we are one of 19 schools in the UK to have the Food for Life Gold School Award. I was the recipient of the Educatering School Food Plan Awards in 2016 and The Caroline Walker Trust Food Hero of The Year 2019. I was also asked to be a Headteacher adviser to the UK Department of Health and Social Care for the government’s Childhood Obesity Plan. Washingborough Academy are also a case study school for the UK Government’s Childhood Obesity Plan. I am the co-founder and trustee of TastEd (ww.tasteeducation.com) which supports children’s healthy eating through sensory food education to support the lunchtime eating experience.

I regularly speak nationally and internationally on how Food Education and healthy school meals can benefit children’s health and well-being and have delivered Westminster Briefings as well as talks in Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Italy, Denmark and China. I am a member of the All Party Parliamentary Group on School Food and have also worked with the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations.