A unique training kitchen designed to improve the skills of the county's dinner ladies has opened at an Oxford primary school.

The facility at Rose Hill Primary School, which is the only one in the country to be run by a local authority, was unveiled with support from celebrity chef Raymond Blanc.

The first batch of cooks will begin NVQ classes at the kitchen on Tuesday and all of the county's 200 'catering supervisors' will eventually pass through its doors to become 'school chefs' once qualified.

The staff will learn about different methods of food preparation and their links to healthy eating; be taught how to work with pastry and flour, and pick up skills in food presentation.

In a video message played before the official opening, Mr Blanc, who runs Le Manoir Aux Quat' Saisons in Great Milton, praised Jamie Oliver for raising the issue of healthy school meals.

He added: "This is really exciting. We are all communicating with our food and that is something we should celebrate."

The training centre, which took 18 months to complete, was jointly financed by the national training network School FEAST (Food Excellence And Skills Training) and Oxfordshire County Council, which provides school meals through its Food with Thought (FwT) brand.

The number of the county's pupils eating schools meals last term rose nine per cent compared with the same period the previous year, and FwT serves up to 11,000 meals a day.

Colin Garnham-Edge, FwT's service manager, said: "For too long school chefs have been unrecognised until Jamie Oliver arrived on the scene a few years ago.

"We all know about the Turkey Twizzlers scenario and back then a lot of the work of our staff involved opening packets of frozen food. All that has gone and many of our schools now have deliveries from local butchers and all our food, where possible, is made from fresh ingredients."

He added: "This centre is absolutely vital, not only for our staff, because it is somewhere they can get professional qualifications, but it will also benefit the children of Oxfordshire."

Les Redhead, FwT's operations manager, said: "We have been building up to this for the last three or four years and it fantastic to have a facility like this."

Dinner lady Julie Teague, who works at Harwell School, said: "School meals are a lot more popular now and hopefully this will make even more kids eat them."