A school where pupils tend chickens and grow their own food was today hailed by Prince Charles as a role model for boosting education.
He was joined by chef Jamie Oliver at Carshalton Boys Sports College, where standards have risen dramatically since healthy eating was put at the heart of the curriculum.
Pupils are taught cooking in a classroom modelled on the Masterchef kitchen, using vegetables they grow in the playground and eggs laid by the school?s 12 chickens.
School dinners have been revolutionised by professional chef Dave Holdsworth, who serves up 1,100 hot meals a day to 90 per cent of the pupils - up from 20 per cent.
Lunches cost ?1.90 for a main course and vegetables, dessert and drink, while 200 pupils arrive early for a ?1 breakfast. Those staying on to study or take part in sport after school get a free curry at 4.30pm.
The school, located in one of the biggest council estates in Europe, has seen results improve from four per cent a decade ago to 100 per cent of pupils getting five GCSEs at grades A-C for the last three years.
Headteacher Simon Barber said: ?If you want them to achieve, you have got to keep them happy. Good food means that students are happy and it makes them work even better.
?We are a non-selective school in a selective borough. All around us are grammar schools. Everyone who is left, we pick up. We have massively improved achievement. Now we are massively oversubscribed.?
Pupils gather ingredients and find their own recipes on iPads. They are encouraged to pass on their cooking skills to their fathers at ?lads and dads? classes.
Mr Barber said the garden had transformed the boys? knowledge of food. ?They would make a chicken wrap but pick out the salad, saying ?We want fresh salad from the packets we get at Tesco?.?
Pupil James Needham, 14, said: ?I have grown red currants, strawberries, courgettes, broccoli, carrots and pumpkins in the last six months and they taste great because they are so fresh and organic.?
Restaurant critic Giles Coren visited the school canteen and said the salmon with chilli and coriander was something that ?wouldn?t disgrace a high street brasserie at something like ?10.95, but available here for ?1.65?.
Oliver, whose campaign to transform the quality of school food began in 2005, will come face to face with a lookalike scarecrow built by the pupils.
He wants the Carshalton model to be replicated in schools and workplaces across Britain but has criticised Tory Education Secretary Michael Gove for exempting new academies from nutritional standards.
Myles Bremner, chief executive of the prince?s Garden Organic charity, said: ?Carshalton offers great inspiration for any school out there that feels encouraging its pupils to eat healthy food is an impossible challenge.?
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