CELEBRITY chef Jamie Oliver has been invited to open a £300,000 school restaurant which will provide healthier food to hundreds of pupils.

St Laurence School, in Bradford on Avon, has approached the culinary campaigner's agent and are hoping he will accept the invitation.

Work on the restaurant and kitchen project started at Easter. A Silver Jubilee appeal, marking the school's 25th birthday, was set up to raise £50,000 towards the cost.

Oliver was approached to open the facility in late summer after the success of his Channel 4 show Jamie's School Dinners.

The programmes showed how he transformed catering in London primary schools.

Headteacher James Colquhoun said: "There has been some involvement but we have yet to receive his reply. That was just before Easter."

The restaurant facilities will mark a change in the school's menu, with pupils set to benefit from a healthier regime.

"It's going to be a restaurant for 250 people with modern catering facilities and a menu that will fit into the Jamie Oliver recipe," Mr Colquhoun said.

"I think the governors, staff and parents have all been thinking about healthy eating for several years.

"It's now no longer a whim to say that bad food equals bad behaviour and poor concentration.

"We are very serious about doing everything we can to provide a calm and civilised environment where good food is the order of the day."

St Laurence is looking for new caterers after the previous firm, Scholarest, left last year.

Mr Colquhoun said: "We are advertising this week for a catering manager with large scale commercial experience rather than school catering. I think it's extremely important."

Chairman of governors Vivien Davies said any potential involvement by Mr Oliver in the restaurant's opening, pencilled in for July, would cap a year of hard work.

"We do want to have that sort of profile and show how much the parents and pupils have put into it with all the fundraising," she said.

"It would be wonderful but you can't make a commitment about it at the moment. Unless we get a response then I don't know, is the answer."

Miss Davies said the school were looking forward to welcoming a new catering firm.

"It's a very exciting prospect. We closed the facilities that were there just a year ago because we were deeply unsatisfied by the food that was being delivered by the previous caterers," she said.

"We are really looking forward to getting decent food in a good environment. It's good to be ahead of the game."