Empower your pupils to put good food at the heart of a healthy, high-performing school community.

Every single child deserves access to healthy, nutritious food at school – but we all know that’s not the case. Yet.

Bite Back challenges a world in which a handful of companies have the power and influence to flood our world with junk. We’d love your school to join the fight.

We’re constantly on the hunt for passionate pupils who can make a difference through social action – and dedicated staff to lead and inspire them. We’ve worked with 200 schools and now it’s your turn!

Applications to the programme are currently closed, but if you are interested in joining the next cohort simply register your interest and we'll make sure you're the first to know when applications are open.

What is Bite Back in Schools?

How Does It Work?

Bite Back in Schools supports students to uncover the injustices within the food system, gather evidence from their school and community, and devise a social action project that will transform your school canteen to put child health first!

If your school makes the cut, we’ll kick things off with an inspiring assembly, led by one of our incredible young activists. That leads into a series of engaging sessions for a whole year-group in Key Stage 3 — around five hours in total during curriculum time in the Autumn term.

Don’t worry, we’ll handle all the planning and resources. We’ll even train up your staff to deliver the sessions. We call this phase one – it’ll help open your students’ eyes to the many ways the global food system is rigged against them, encouraging them to take part in collective social action.

Those whole-year sessions fuel the flames for phase two, when you’ll recruit a passionate team of 10-15 hand-picked students to join forces as School Food Champions, hungry to improve their school food environment. We’ll provide training and resources for you to deliver informative, engaging sessions on topics such as:

• What does a great school food culture look like?
• What is youth social action and how do we design a great campaign?
• How do we build a great team and gain skills to make our voices heard?

Armed with this knowledge, your team of young activists review your school’s current food culture. Then they’ll work with school leaders and caterers to develop a social action project that puts nutritious, great-tasting food in the spotlight instead of the junk that’s all-too-often forced down children’s throats.

You’ll meet weekly from January to June, either at lunchtime, as an after-school club, or as an enrichment activity.

You’ll connect with Bite Back’s amazing young leaders, get inspired by examples of how great school food can be, and tap into a fast-growing network of young activists who are leading change across the country and sharing what they’ve learnt along the way.

Finally, phase three gives you access to the Bite Back in Schools movement - where you’ll join our community of like-minded schools who understand the vital role school food plays in protecting child health. Being part of our movement provides exclusive opportunities for both students and school leaders.

Bite Back in Schools is fully-funded – if your school is accepted, Bite Back provides £1100 as remuneration for the teacher/s involved, and to cover the costs of your activities and campaigns. Watch this space for other goodies too, like merchandise, workbooks and big-prize competitions.

Benefits for Young People

1. Transform the school from the inside.
2. Join a fun and rewarding programme that goes beyond class-as-usual.
3. Make new friends in the fast-growing Bite Back movement.
4. Build valuable campaigning, leadership, and public speaking skills.

Benefits for Teachers and Schools

1. Put healthy food in the spotlight within your school.
2. Drive social action through pupil voice on issues that matter to young people.
3. Make a tangible difference to your whole school community.
4. Join a movement of 200 schools sharing best practice on school food issues.

If you have any questions, get in touch with us via schoolfoodchampions@biteback2030.com.

How Do We Select Schools?

We anticipate to have a limited number of funded places for 2025/26. If we receive more applications than we can fund, to ensure we’re providing opportunities for change in the communities most impacted by health inequalities, we will prioritise applications from schools which meet the following demographic criteria:

• Above national average % of pupils receiving free school meals,
• Areas with high obesity rates,
• LAs with the highest proportion of neighbourhoods in the most deprived 10% of neighbourhoods on the IMD 2019,
• Rural and coastal areas.

If you want to be the first to know when applications are open for Bite Back in Schools, just click the button below.

Bite Back in Schools is funded by the #iWill Fund. The #iwill Fund is made possible thanks to £66 million joint investment from The National Lottery Community Fund and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to support young people to access high quality social action opportunities. BiteBack2030 is acting as a match funder and awarding grants on behalf of the #iwill Fund.