38 years championing Food & Nutrition, now this teacher is doing the Diploma

There is a certain symmetry to Chris Hawkins’s career. The spark that set it in motion was a passionate A-level home economics teacher whose enthusiasm, as Chris puts it, ‘helped shape the course of my entire career.’ In the decades that followed, she became that teacher for generations of students of her own – head of department, then head of sixth form, then a member of the senior leadership team – and now, 38 years later, she is starting again as a culinary student herself. 

Chris joined Stamford School in Lincolnshire as Head of Department and built, year by year, a case for food & nutrition as a subject that deserved to be taken seriously. In the early years, that was not a given. Opportunities for boys to study cookery were limited, so Chris introduced sessions through general studies and started after-school clubs, expanding who the subject belonged to. When the school extended food & nutrition GCSE provision to all students, boys and girls chose it in equal numbers. ‘It was incredibly satisfying,’ she says, ‘to see the subject flourish and gain the recognition it deserved as an academic discipline as well as an essential life skill.’ 

It is a conviction she held and repeated throughout her career: that good food education is not an alternative to rigour but an expression of it. ‘It brings together science, creativity, problem-solving and practical application in a way that few other subjects can,’ she says. Students learn not only how to cook, but how ingredients work, how nutrition affects the body, how to plan and manage. The skills that follow – resilience, independence, the ability to produce consistent work under pressure – travel far beyond the kitchen. ‘There is something incredibly rewarding about watching a student develop confidence, master a new skill and take pride in creating something with their own hands.’ 

Over the years, Stamford has seen House Bake Off competitions, Rotary Young Chef entries and Cooking on a Budget sessions for sixth formers. In 2014, the department was fully refurbished and reopened by Dame Mary Berry. That day, students from Years 9 to 13 had the opportunity to cook alongside the former Bake Off judge. Chris’s promotion to senior leadership broadened her influence across the school, but food & nutrition remained, as she puts it, ‘the defining passion of my career.’ 

The final chapter of her time at Stamford brought something she had not anticipated. When the school introduced the Leiths course to its sixth form, Chris watched her students apply themselves with a seriousness and enthusiasm that gave her pause. ‘Watching our students embrace the course, develop impressive practical skills and grow in confidence has been incredibly rewarding,’ she says. ‘Seeing their enthusiasm and success gave me a real insight into the quality of the Leiths experience.’ That insight, she says, undoubtedly inspired what comes next. 

Chris believes the best learning combines expert instruction with hands-on practice. It is how she was taught, how she has taught, and this September, she will begin again at the start – as a student on the Leiths Culinary Diploma. The decision, she says, was not a difficult one. She has spent decades encouraging students to embrace new challenges. ‘After 38 years of encouraging others to embrace new opportunities, it felt like the perfect moment to challenge myself and do the same.’ 

Where the Diploma leads, she is keeping an open mind. Right now, the point is to deepen the knowledge of food she has spent her career passing on, and to be challenged by tutors she respects. ‘I have always believed that learning should never stop,’ she says. And, for Chris, it sounds like it never will.

If you’re interested in doing the Leiths Culinary Diploma like Chris is, find out more here.