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Food education in Northern Ireland (NI) stands at a moment of change. The TransformED NI strategy identifies tackling educational disadvantage as a reform priority (Department of Education, 2025). The evidence is stark: in the OECD’s PISA assessments, pupils’ socio-economic circumstances influenced their performance in every participating system (OECD, 2023) and few subjects sit closer to those circumstances than food. If the curriculum is to be food-proofed for a cost-of-living crisis, food education is where that work must begin. Caraher and Furey (2025) describe it as the epitome of life skills insofar as it embodies socialisation, health and nutrition, environmental awareness; and, for some pupils, a future career, making exclusion from it an economic as much as an educational issue.

NI starts from a position of relative strength: Home Economics is a compulsory strand of the curriculum at Key Stage 3 (KS3), a status uncommon internationally (McCloat & Caraher, 2020) and one envied by colleagues in the Republic of Ireland, where teachers have long campaigned for equivalent compulsory status (McCloat et al., 2025). That strength cannot be taken for granted. Recent research with 358 Home Economics teachers across the island of Ireland, 160 of them in NI, reported challenges in resourcing, timetabling and content-heavy curricula (McCloat et al., 2025). Teachers described reduced class time forcing simplified recipes and loss of practical skills, while almost half of NI respondents reporting non-specialist teaching in their departments, and two-thirds had not engaged in any subject-specific professional development in the previous two years. Building on strong foundations requires more than protecting curriculum time: it requires being clear about what food education is for.

‘Food becomes a driver of social inclusion when people can physically access it, understand it, afford it, and participate in food cultures without stigma – and food education enables all four.’

At KS3 (ages 11–14), the familiar PIES model outlines individuals’ Physical, Intellectual, Emotional and Social needs (CCEA, 2007). PIES describes what pupils need; it says nothing about whether they can actually meet those needs – a silence that matters in a cost-of-living crisis. We therefore propose repurposing, rather than replacing, PIES around Physical, Informational and Economic access to food, with food celebrated as a vehicle for Social inclusion. Food becomes a driver of social inclusion when people can physically access it, understand it, afford it, and participate in food cultures without stigma – and food education enables all four.

The reframed model is not abstract; each dimension carries practical implications for the classroom. Physically, it starts with an audit of whether every pupil can reach and use practical cooking facilities, and whether the wider school food environment facilitates healthy choices. Informationally, pupils learn to read labels, compare unit prices and spot marketing claims, supported by recipes written for a range of reading levels and languages. Economically, most NI schools already supply ingredients, with annual pupil contributions of £10–£15 at KS3 rising towards £40 at GCSE (McCloat et al., 2025). Planning low-cost, adaptable dishes keeps those contributions from excluding any pupil during high food inflation. Socially, classes cook and share dishes drawn from the food cultures represented in every classroom, promoting healthy choices without demonising any food, or the families who eat it.

Food-proofing the KS3 curriculum – ensuring every pupil can access food education physically, informationally, economically and socially would benefit pupils, parents, teachers, employers and industry alike.

References

Caraher, M. & Furey, S. (2025). UK food policy history: Economic, social and political influences (1st ed). London: Routledge. ISBN 9781032986807.

Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment. (2007). Learning for Life and Work: Home Economics. .

Department of Education. (2025). TransformED NI: Transforming teaching and learning: A strategy for educational excellence in Northern Ireland. .

McCloat, A. & Caraher, M. (2020). An international review of second level food education curriculum policy. Cambridge Journal of Education, 50(3), 303–324. .

McCloat, A., Davidson, M., Coffey, S. & Doherty, P. (2025). Teachers’ perspectives on advancing the teaching of Home Economics on the island of Ireland. International Journal of Home Economics, 18(2), 87–102. .

OECD. (2023). PISA 2022 results (Volume I): The state of learning and equity in education. Paris: OECD Publishing. .