Curriculum and Assessment Review Final Report

The Curriculum and Assessment Review Final Report was published on 5 November 2025. Read ahead for the British Nutrition Foundation's response and a summary of the main recommendations. 

The British Nutrition Foundation welcomes the renaming of ‘Cooking and Nutrition’ to ‘Food and Nutrition’, reflecting the broader scope of the subject beyond practical skills. However, practical cookery will remain central, alongside rich knowledge and skills that support lifelong health, career pathways, and qualifications. It is also positive to see explicit references to the addition of food hygiene and sustainability. 

The British Nutrition Foundation recommended that ‘food’ should become a stand-alone subject, however this hasn’t been accepted by the Review Panel. We understand the reasoning behind this and will continue to work with our colleagues at The Design & Technology Association to ensure that Food and Nutrition finds its correct place within the parent subject of D&T.

We also recommended that food education, in its broadest sense, should be a core part of every pupil’s learning throughout school. We will seek to work with the DfE to include food education as part of enrichment activities and life skills that will prepare young people for life and work.

The Review Panel recommends that the Government:

• Renames the subject ‘Food and Nutrition’ and ensures it has its own aims and purpose of study that better reflect what it covers and its discrete identity within D&T.
• Ensures that sufficient detail in the curriculum sets clear expectations about what should be taught at each key stage to reflect the fact that the subject develops skills for life as well as progression to further study.
• Reviews the level 3 vocational options for food science to determine the best means of ensuring that the needs of learners are met and that there is a strong ‘pipeline’ into higher education and careers.

Beyond Food and Nutrition, the Report highlights the importance of financial education, media literacy, and oracy.

Wider food education provides a practical context for these skills: financial education through recipe costing, budgeting, smart shopping, and reducing food waste; media literacy by helping pupils critically evaluate information on social media, e.g. around healthy eating and nutrition; and oracy through discussion, explanation, and collaboration in the food room.

Additionally, as healthy eating is part of Relationships and Health Education, there are further opportunities to equip pupils with the skills to feed themselves and others affordably and healthily, both now and in later life.

We are also delighted to see the recommendation for a review of Level 3 options for food science. The British Nutrition Foundation provided evidence to the Review Panel that the lack of a ‘food’ A-Level qualification is having a considerable impact on pathways into further/higher education and careers in the agri-food industry, so a Level 3 review is very much welcomed.

We look forward to the next steps in the curriculum design process.

Government response to the report is as follows: 

"Design and technology (including cooking and nutrition)
We will revise the design and technology curriculum and GCSE subject content to
focus on developing pupils’ design capability and introduce the concept of
sustainability within the programme of study. Taken together, these changes will help
the country to tackle challenges around building a sustainable economy through more discerning use of materials and processes and better reflect the needs of the design sector as a whole.

As part of this broader reform, we will enhance the identity of food education by
establishing it as a distinct strand within design and technology. We agree with the 
Review’s recommendations that it should be more clearly distinguished as a discrete
element of the design and technology curriculum and renamed ‘food and nutrition’. Whilst maintaining the important emphasis on cookery, we will make the programme of study more specific to prepare pupils for life and potential future careers in the food
sector.

We will also carry out a review of the level 3 vocational study options for food science to determine whether the suite of qualifications available at this level adequately supports a strong pipeline into higher education and careers."

Find the full government response here.