about Food Tech? And the cost?

V

All free here (Scotland) and included, although they often cook tiny portions (a quiche the size of a jam tart, for example). Anything where parents have to contribute to paying for materials / ingredients etc for an education, in my opinion, means that the education is no longer "free" or "fair". Schools that do this at all (in any subject) are bringing market forces into education. Your GCSE grade is better because you could afford a bay leaf and I only managed to get a bit of parsely etc etc.

I see this with those on FSM but also, I agree with someone above, it often hits those who are just above the (fairly arbitrary) "poverty line" who get nothing to support them as so end up struggling more.

Take it up with governors as schools need to find a way of ensuring that education is free, as it is intended to be. If this means (as someone above) that they eat the food in school and don't take it home (thereby not "subsidising" the home food budget) well that would work.

My dd cant substitute or leave out ingredients unless they are specified as optional.
They cook every second week, the first week they cook their choice, eg dd will cook a chicken dish, in the next lesson they will be expected to recreate the recipe adapting the contents to suit other tastes or cultures, at that point they may change the ingredients, veg instead of meat etc.

Thank Christ my DC can drop this soon. One effort was burnt (by teacher) and inedible, the Christmas cake cost over fifteen quid (ingredients and tins we didn't have - we cook from scratch but don't bake as have a tiny house) including three hours worth of electricity.

Nobody we know even likes it (and for it to be nice, doesn't it have to be fed with alcohol?) so a waste of time, good food, money and energy. Takes the economy out of home economics

DD isn't allowed to leave anything out and if you can't afford the garnishes etc then it will affect the gcse grade.

YANBU Food tech is stupidly expensive, when I did technology and engineering at school and college I never paid for materials, surely ingredients would come under that budget? I wasnt alowed to take part in a lot of food tech lessons because we couldnt afford ingredients. That or my mum would give me the money fir ingredients but not be able to drop me off or pick me up so Id end up with a tenners worth of donuts and biscuits for lunch. Oh last thing, never ever ever send in a nice baking dish. I broke 2 of my mums on the bus when i was at school a few years ago, she was not pleased!

skinny There are always essential ingredients and non essential! I think one way round it is for FT teachers to split the list in two! When DD does food tech she will get value/ basic/ no frills / aldi/ lidl products all the way without all the little extras! No harm in that! :)

Totally agree with MrsT and Woowoo.
I emailed my ds tech teacher about the huge list of ingredients for the half term.
She emailed back telling me what he couldleave out if necessary.
Why couldn't she just have done that in the first place??
His banoffe pie was worth all the cash though!! [Frin]

Thank you woowoo and crohnically for agreeing with my little rant this morning! I thought I might get flamed! We absolutely do not (and never will) be eligible for FSM, tax credits etc. I earn a wage which on paper looks good enough. We have a very small mortgage yet after bills, childcare, £60 PW food, petrol etc. are left with practically nothing. I know that some people who are eligable for FSM, tax credits, PP etc. have more disposable income than we have. Not all of course. This thread hot a raw nerve and p'ed me off well and truly this morning.

YANBU DD does food tech GCSE and it is ridiculous. They do 2-3 meals in one day at times and if they aren't graded that day they have to do it again!!! Costs me about 5-10 per recipe and it is every week. Not sure if I would putmy others of unless they were desperate. Don't fancy my twins doing it!

Yes MrsLT. At the moment, there seem to be a lot of families who earn just a little too much money to qualify for any help, which means they're actually worse off than those with a slightly lower income. In our school, children on FSM also get a discount on school uniform.

And you can almost guarantee that, if you went to the head and pleaded hardship, you would be dismissed as if you were that badly off you would receive FSM.

Whereas when I was at school the teachers had sneaky ways of helping those less well off. For example, in year 10/11 we had the option of going swimming in PE time. We had to pay for ourselves. However, the teacher would collect up everyone's money and buy a multi trip card with it- where you get 10 swimming sessions but only pay for 9. This meant that 1 child in every 10 could get in free. I doubt that would be allowed now- schools aren't allowed to charge extra to cover those who can't/don't pay, even though in my example we only paid the same as we would have anyway, the school would probably be forced to give every student a 10% discount or something.

We paid for all cookery and all needlework materials.

DDs pay for cooking and some fabric, but there seems to be some scrap about.

I agree MrsLT.

It's the same with school trips.

This is why the pupil premium should be scrapped and replaced with a system that reaches all families that need help.

AIBU to think there should be a way of receiving financial support? Alternatively, in each class, every student pays in x amount and then people receiving (for example, FSM, tax credits, etc;) don't have to pay as much or anything.
No I'm bloody sick of people on FSM, tax credits etc getting a bloody discount or not paying anything in at all. We can't afford extra stuff at the moment. At all. We have no money after the bills and basics and we don't claim benefits so on what basis do we get free stuff? FFS.

We had to pay for wood etc that we used too. Generally we were given a bit of free rein designing our project, but then had to pay for the materials (over and above the basic) to make it. For example, we did an electronics project and were given the basic components, but then we had the option to add lights, switches etc if we paid for the bits. Except when it came to GCSE, then you paid for everything. In fact, I did GCSE Resistant Materials and we had to pay to photocopy A3 paper with a particular design and our initials on it, to do the paperwork for our design project on.

In IT we had to pay for our own printing (think we got something like 200 pages a year free, enough to cover basic school work, but had to then pay for extras).

I can't remember if we had to pay for our own fabric in textiles though.

Did I just go to a really cheapskate school?

F a child is on fsm the school have to provide ingredients! I'm a tech teacher and a child should not be held back at a key subject due to cost

Thats not true at all - you are passing your school policy off as a blanket 'law'.

A parent can request that pupil premium is used. Or indeed a HoY can intervene. But of course if the FSM kids aren't physically bringing anything in - that marks them as different to their peers who are bringing ingredients in.

The whole Food Tech thing annoys me. It pisses me off no end that I have to pay/send in anything. I don't have to for any other tech lessons and I'm damned sure quality wood is more expensive than a couple of eggs and some flour.

I don't know, I got bollocked for refusing to cook mince when my whole family was vege!

Perhaps they aren't allowed to sub ingredients?

Then you claim your mum has turned veggie and you have to cook veggie food in food tech.

I can't see a school forcing a Muslim kid to make pork sausages or something like that!

Perhaps they aren't allowed to sub ingredients? Another poster above said her daughter got detention for adding herbs.

I think some people have been a bit rude on this thread. Some families are living down to the penny. I wouldn't be able to afford £2.50 a week for ingredients at the moment so can see why OP could be struggling. I'd be fucked if we had to do some of the more expensive recipes that other posters have had to do.

heronsfly that's great!

People who are complaining about the code, I don't understand why you don't just sub in cheaper ingredients?

Making a Thai chicken curry? Swap the chicken for an aubergine or a courgette.
Making a Moroccan dish with 12 spices which you don't have? Buy a pack of Moroccan spice mix instead. .
Making chilli? Swap the mince for a tin of beans and two grated carrots.

I had to come back to this thread because i suspect dd3s Food Tech teacher could be a mnetter
This weeks ingredient list consists of
2 large potatoes.
1 large onion.
2 leeks.
salt and pepper.
A large spoonful of double cream if required.
They are cooking the period before break. and will then sit down together and eat what they have made.
It cost me about a pound for the leeks, I had everything else, and because they are eating straight after lesson, there is no keeping hot or cold,or bringing home on bus.
So, if you teach food tech at a mixed grammar school in East Kent,thank you have a and some

I sometimes teach food tech and it varies from school to school. It can be done very well and very badly.

Most schools I've worked in wouldn't be able to bulk buy, as ingredients then need weighing out, with an hour lesson there wouldn't be time to do that and cook anything very challenging.

Remember there are approx 20 children of mixed ability and unlikely to be 20 sets of scales. I think many parents under estimate what can realistically be achieved within the timeframe of a lesson.

Most schools are woefully ill equipped for storing food too. The fridges are not big enough for 20-100 students food to be stored daily. It also relies on a teacher or if lucky enough, a technician to put the food in once it's cooled down.

The better equipped departments, with Heads of department and teachers who have well developed affordable recipes are a rare mix in my experience.

Sorry wasn't meant to be a rant, just a viewpoint from the opposite side of the fence.

F a child is on fsm the school have to provide ingredients! I'm a tech teacher and a child should not be held back at a key subject due to cost! Definitely bring it up with the teacher if you are struggling! Usually they can help with making it discrete at the same time

Complete pain in the arse. I was really annoyed last year when they were supposed to make veg stew. Because I didn't have time to shop anywhere else, I bought the ingredients at the co-op. It came to over ten quid. They then changed their mind and said they were making buns instead that week. Livid.

Had to laugh this term when they made french bread pizza. Baguette, tomato puree and cheese. You need teaching to make this? It's cheese on toast with puree! And they'd already made pizza earlier in the term and made the base from scratch.

And three of the recipes were basically buns. (if you can tell me the significant difference between butterfly buns and chocolate cake I'll be impressed).

So glad food tech is over for this year.