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Discover how the Leiths Culinary Diploma can launch your career in food – join our webinar on Monday, 17 August 2026, 7–8pm.
Leiths’ Masters-level food education qualification can now be taken outside London for the first time, with Queen’s College, Taunton the first hub to deliver it regionally.
The Leiths Culinary Diploma class of 2026 graduated in a ceremony that saw the school award its first ever Honorary Culinary Diploma and name a Student of the Year who had swapped two decades in the corporate world for a year in the kitchen.
Maria Dunbar, CEO of Leiths Education, argues that the chef’s hat belongs beside the hard hat and the graduation cap. Writing in response to the Prime Minister’s case for valuing practical skills as much as academic ones, she makes the point that a career in food is still too often treated as the fallback for children who did not take to written exams, when it is anything but. Almost everyone now agrees children should learn to cook, she says. The hard part is how you make it happen, and that is, Maria argues, where this is won or lost.
Aged eighteen, Katya Katalinic had a stroke in Cape Town and woke from a six-week coma with no memory of her own life. This month she finished the Culinary Diploma. She talks to us about how learning to cook is what’s given her a future back.
Hispi cabbage is naturally sweet and tender, meaning it can taken on a deep flavour when charred and brushed with miso butter. Here, we give you a year-round recipe but, in the peak of summer, this would work just as well barbecued over silvery orange coals.
All Saints Educational Trust (ASET) offers its grant to both training and practicing food teachers and technicians. Allowing individuals at different stages before or during their food teaching career to
Rebecca Swan trained as a chef at Leiths in the nineties, raised four children and built two businesses along the way, including a cake company she still runs today. Here, she tells us why she returned to Leiths to train as a food teacher, and the path it has opened to a PGCE and a career in teaching.
Meet Ellis, Business Development & Events Executive at Leiths. Find his quickfire favourite herb and his most loved kitchen utensil, along with more about what he does at the Culinary School.
Join us for our Open Evening at Leiths Culinary School on Thursday 1 October 2026, 6.30–8.30pm and discover how to fast-track your future in food with the Leiths Culinary Diploma.
Laoise Casey changed careers in her thirties, training at Leiths before a weekly Evening Standard column, a run of restaurant kitchens and a development role at Marks and Spencer. She is now head of food at the recipe platform Plate Up.
Four Leiths Culinary Diploma graduates have found their way to Mindful Chef. Head of food Jesse Kempner and development chef Celia Price explain why its customers still love to cook, and how the company clears the way for them to enjoy it.
Cate Walton trained at Leiths and has spent twelve years writing recipes and styling food for titles including Sainsbury’s Magazine, Good Food and Olive. She talks about private cheffing, the consistency she learned on a ski season and what makes a recipe worth returning to.
