The food was fabulous, the service great and the themes were very creative which made judging this year's My High School Restaurant Rules competition very difficult for judges.

The annual competition aims to teach students studying food production at high school what it is like to work in a real restaurant and how to serve real people, and this is achieved when groups take over the Edith Cowan University By Degrees restaurant for a day.

University Spokesman Nevil Alexander said the calibre of students and the work they put in was extraordinary.

"Every year this competition gets tougher and tougher, and every year the students seem to improve to the extent that now some of them could easily work in the industry and achieve a very successful career," he said.

This year's winner of the competition for School Of The Year was Clarkson Community High School, whose Caribbean theme wowed the judges.

The judges said the students had put in a great deal of effort to decorate the restaurant with a tropical theme and used franjipani flowers as one of their main points in the theme.

"They married the food with the theme extremely well and backed it up with exemplary service," Mr Alexander said. "The quality of what these students produced in terms of food and also restaurant ambience is definitely up there with that of some real restaurants."

Picture: The winning team from Clarkson Community High School with CCHS's Ms Peta Brown and Edith Cowan University's David Donovan (centre)