to be deeply sceptical about "food technology"

[hatwoman]

just back from an open evening at our local secondary school and had the pleasure to look at the food technology department...they seemed to do lots of "projects"...eg designing a questionnaire to find out what type of food a "target group" might want...and watching cut apple go brown . When I asked a sixth former if she knew how to bake a cake she said "erm...yes...but that's because I do it at home". shouldn;t they teach, erm, cooking? you know, how to make a white sauce, how to cook mince so that you can make spag bol, chilli or shepherds pie...how to cook a stew, a basic 4-4-4-2 sponge with butter cream icing that you can knok up in 10 mins without getting a recipe book out.

I work with soemone who has a food tec GSCE and can not cook at all

Nah, if you can read, you can cook.

Best to have the subject teach other skills that will be useful in life.

I am a food tech teacher. Food tech comes under design and technology now which is why kids have to research their target market etc before designing a dish. Watching an apple go brown is actually a lesson I am doing next week with my year 10s- it is all about different chemical reactions in food and why is goes brown.
Aside from that, they DO do plenty of cooking.

The government (or at least the last government) introduced the License to Cook in schools which means every child in England should have the opportunity to have food technology lessons by 2011.

I wish they would bring cookery back. The sad thing is that there are a lot of DCs who are practical and would be fantastic cooks, but they have to do all the paper work with endless plans, questionaires etc when all they need are the practical skills. (sewing is just as bad-or I should say textiles. I have never got over my DS having to 'research' an embroidery stitch! I was shown how to do embroidery stitches).

By the way, in my school we do teach all those things- they learn how to make basic sauces, tomato sauce/cheese sauce, adaptions of these. They also learn how to make spag bol, basic mince dishes etc. In fact I cooked spag bol today with 50 kids! They also learn basic cake making skills. All of this will be taught in KS3 (yrs 7-9) so by the end of KS3 they should have learnt all of this.

my dd is year 10....she is doing the catering gcse. quite impressed with it actually,they even have to wear proper chefs whites!

she started off with a soup,profiteroles and now covering the sauces etc...the book hey have been given shows all the cake making skills,but they dont do those til next year....oh,and pastry,they learn all those methods

They DO teach cooking in food tech, but they also get the kids to do market research and food tasting etc.

Bear in mind, they only get 1 session of technology per week, and it is rotated between food tech, resistant materials (metal work, woodwork and plastic to you and me), textiles and product design. There is not enough time in the week to dedicate more to it, as they have to have 3 sessions each of maths, english, science, mfl, at least 2-3 of PE, one session each of history, geography, RS, art, drama, music, dance...

Also, one thing is teaching a subject. Retaining it is another altogether. Most students I come across forget stuff almost as soon as they´ve done it!

I did food tech GCSE. The coursework for it was actually some of the most complicated and demanding on comparison to the rest of them. And if nothing else, we learnt basic recipes that you use endlessly when cooking for a family; pasta bake, lasagne, stir fry, crumbles, scones, scrounge cake, chocolate moose...

But they DO! They cook something every time they have a class (at least in my school they do). They do have to remember to bring the ingredients first of course. And then they are supposed to take the food home for a taste test. So someone didn´t know how to bake a cake? So WHAT! She probably cooked a whole lead of other stuff, like PROPER food. And then, like a typical teenager, forgot all about it!

In my food tech class we made 'beef and beans pie' and butterfly cakes, I only got a C for my butterflycakes because they were too snazzy!
Not that I'm bitter at all....

ok...you have reassured me. and a home-made cake is proper food. I also asked her about other cooking and she said it was "mainly salads"...

I agree to a certain extent. If I want to cook something I do not feel the need to "design" a recipe first, or to research the market, or design the packaging and labels. This is because I am not Nigella lawson. If I want to make something I follow the recipe and try to cook it. I do wish I had been taught to do so a bit better at school!

I am a teacher and tbh they do spend a lot of time designing and planning. This is because that is what is in the national curriculum so the teacher has to show that they can do it. Researching pizzas seems a bit pointless to me, but perhaps if they haven't done this, they won't have the skills to do food at GCSE? And bear in mind they have to learn all the healthy eating stuff too.

We did wiring a plug as part of GCSE physics (bog standard combined/double science but 3 subjects were taught separately). Though of course not that much use now. I think my sister did washing symbols in GCSE textiles but she took that as an option.

I don't remember doing much useful in food technology TBH. I did finish it in year 9 but all I can remember is designing a new type of scone, making a fruit smoothie, and doing a baked potato with our own choice of filling. Not exactly rocket science even if you do mostly eat processed junk. I'd imagine most students can manage a jacket potato and beans! Yes if you can read you can follow a recipe, but lots of people don't.

Useful things IMO would be:

That pyramid/pie chart thing of how many portions of different foods, fruit/veg, carbs, protein, etc - not just that (as we definitely did that, but I can't remember it now) but also looking at how you can make up a day's or a week's meal plan to incorporate all of these things.

In fact, meal planning in general and how to use leftovers in another meal.

Really easy, basic cooking staples like soup/casseroles - things you can chuck anything into. How easy is it to make soup?? And cheap, filling and good for you. I took DS to the ex-inlaws the other day and XFIL was telling me they had a Czech student staying who was vegetarian and she had showed them how to make soup, and it was the first time he'd ever made soup in 58 years of his life.

Basic sauces - tomato sauce with chunky or pureed veg (pupil's choice), white sauce/cheese sauce, proper gravy(?)

4/4/4/2 sponge as someone said. I didn't know this was the basic sponge recipe until I was 21. I always thought cakes were difficult!

Looking at ingredients - what can be substituted if something is too expensive/fattening or the other way if you want to make something taste a bit nicer.

How to use herbs and spices and what they complement, to reduce reliance on packet mixes and salt.

Looking at food which is in season, how it tastes nicer and is cheaper at certain times of the year.

Then if they have time :
How to bulk out meals with e.g. grated carrot, potatoes, lentils, without it tasting horrible.

Vegetarian food which doesn't rely on meat substitutes like quorn, or have an abundance of cheese. So many meat eaters are afraid of veggie food, but it's great!

Food tech isn't cooking. That's like complaining that an engineering course doean't teach you how to rivet.

Agree with Heracles - food tech isn't cooking. I did a degree in Food Science - my spectacularly uninformed careers advisor asked me if I was planning to take hotel management with that. No. It is Applied Chemistry with a strong Food Bias, not Home Ec/Catering.

YANBU a lot of the Russell Group universitys won't look twice at foood technology as they don't consider it an academically rigourous subject.

I got an A in food Tech & can't cook. Hoping it had improved since then but doesn't sound like it!

all my kids have made fab food in home economics dd2 also does among other things budgeting, sewing and safety aspects in the home.Can't remember about what dd1 did.

Bertie- yes but also the meaning of food terms: what creaming / beating / folding is. The basics that then allow you to follow a recipe without thnking it's in a foreign language.

The thing that raised my eyebrows was dd getting As for things that she had cooked and the teacher hadn't tasted it! How can you give full marks for some food without knowing wnat it tastes like????