Leiths Lessons: Partnering with Haberdashers’ Monmouth School

School: Haberdashers’ Monmouth School, Monmouth, Wales  
Courses: KS1 & KS2 Programmes: run as a weekly cookery club with a variety of year groups, Leiths Co-Curricular: 16 students (Year 1: 2025-2026), Leiths Confident Cookery 30: 7 students (Year 1: 2024-2025), 8 students (Year 2: 2025-2026)
Teachers: Kate Kirman and Kate Lewis

Haberdashers’ Monmouth is the only Leiths Partner School in Wales – and an example of a school that offers a pathway of Leiths resources from their prep school into secondary school.

Where it Begins

In the prep school, Deputy Headteacher Kate Kirman has found Leiths’ resources both rigorous and refreshingly flexible while running a weekly cookery club.

‘With very limited equipment, you can really get the children producing things that they’re proud of,’ says Kate. ‘The pressure of the planning and organisation is totally taken away – everything is there for you.’

Parents have reported children recreating dishes for their families at weekends, using the Leiths recipes. For Kate, that speaks to something bigger than cookery skills. ‘Nutrition is so important these days. It’s our responsibility to educate children – they need to know how to use healthy ingredients and adapt recipes.’

Raising the Bar in the Sixth Form

Haberdashers’ Monmouth introduced the Leiths Confident Cookery 30 (LCC30) qualification in 2024. Seven students completed the course in that first cohort; eight are enrolled for 2025. On Saturdays, a further sixteen pupils are doing the Leiths Co-Curricular course – demand so high that parents have been known to set their alarms to secure a place when dates are released.

For Head of Food and Nutrition Kate Lewis, who has been teaching for over twenty years, the partnership has transformed the subject. ‘Every time a new recipe comes out, I either learn a new technique or learn about a new ingredient. It just keeps the subject alive and engaging.’

The effect on students is equally clear. ‘Teaching Leiths in the Sixth Form ensures our students leave not only academically prepared, but life-ready – equipped with industry-level culinary skills, resilience, creativity and the confidence to think critically under pressure. Most importantly, it allows students to discover capabilities they never knew they had, producing food to a professional standard with genuine pride.’

The Expertise Behind It

What makes this work is not simply good resources – it is the depth of culinary education expertise behind them. Leiths has spent fifty years developing and refining how cookery is taught, from professional diplomas to KS1 lesson plans. That knowledge of curriculum, progression and practical delivery is precisely what the Partner School programme brings into schools.

As Ben Blackburn, Director of Studies at Leiths Education, explains: ‘We know how to build courses that work in real classrooms – overcoming real barriers, for real teachers and with real children. Our expertise is in developing and delivering culinary education that is both ambitious and achievable. In schools like Haberdashers’ Monmouth, we can see exactly what that looks like when it takes root across an entire school community.’

Interested in becoming a Leiths Partner School? Sign up to our next webinar here.