Bloody school cookery!!!

[mrsshears]

DD has just announced that she needs all the ingredients for this for tomorrow,as i think is standard with most teenagers.
so we have just rushed to the supermarket to get everything,dd then produces the booklet from school which lists everything in ounces and pints etc erm i thought we were now working in mls and grammes ?? and then tells me i have to send a dish into school to cook it in and weigh out all the ingredients at home before hand! why the hell don't we just cook the thing at home!!! AIBU?

Karma Our food tech budget is £600 per year.

The teacher teaches:
4 rotations x 9 classes (with 20 students in each class)
They cook 6/7 times in the rotation.
&
2 gcse classes (with 15 in each) they cook every week.

I don't think the department can afford to pay somehow.

(Can anyone work out how much the school budget allows per pupil?!)

< goes off to work it out >

80p per student for a 9 week rotation.
80p also per student for 1 whole year of a gcse course.

Oh Kitty don't be daft. I'm not blaming schools for kids being obese! I'm saying obesity is a problem, and cooking lessons in school could be one tiny part of the response to this incredibly complex problem. I am suggsting that national curriculum leadership should be priroitising this sort of thing.

It is a fact that lots of families do not have the skills to cook from scratch. How are children from those kinds of backgrounds supposed to learn these things? Yes, in the home is the ideal, but with a problem of national scale, simple steps in areas of childrens lives that the public purse has infuence over (e.g. school) don't seem at all unreasonable to me.

Ive never heard of anyone insisting that pupils need to bring in a fresh pineapple- surely using tinned pineapple was an option?? I might suggest to pupils that if they wanted they could use fresh pineapple-mainly aimed at the G+T pupils so that they can learn extra skills such as coring etc the pineapple but would never insist.
Whoever said about the cost of the chicken and tortilla ingredients- Im guessing they were making fajitas? We do make fajitas but again- you could substitute the chicken for something cheaper- e.g. bacon or even leave it out altogether if cost was a problem.
Any pupils that came to see me and told me that their parents refused to buy them ingredients- we would phone home and discuss it but usually I would provide ingredients for them. I have provided ingredients for families on low incomes before but the main reason for not having ingredients tends to be laziness/apathy on the pupils side.....

Kitty, I think the ideal is for schools to ask parents for a monetary contribution and then the school provide the ingredients. I would much prefer this, to save myself the hassle of having to get ingredients at the last minute because ds forgot to tell me.

Some parents will just not bother, but I think the school should stretch to cover costs for those (hopefully very few) pupils. I hate the thought of some kid not being able to join in because their parents are crap.

Kids can be lazy and apathetic, but they shouldn't be able to opt out, by not having the ingredients. That gives them control over the situation, rather than the teacher and I imagine it's really hard to keep them under control if they are bored because they can't join in. Much better to have supplies in school, so the teacher can devote their attention to actually teaching everyone in that lesson.

Motea DC will have parents educated in the 70's, 80's, 90's.
The curriculum was (more) about learning basic skills back then so some of them will have had a good basic education.
I actually agree with you but I think that some adults just eat rubbish
( and feed their DC rubbish) regardless of the education they have had.

Much better to have supplies in school, so the teacher can devote their attention to actually teaching everyone in that lesson.
The teacher would need to have a full time technician. Our food teacher has one for 8 hrs per week.

I am thinking that now I know that DS cooks a lot with chicken, I could buy him a bag of that cooked frozen chicken pieces, and eke it out to him per lesson? I think it probably costs about 10p piece, but it's not free-range.

DS just informed me that most of the kids now take in quorn 'chicken pieces' because they're all terrified of getting food poisoning. Bright kids. Now he tells me.

Could a school do this? Eke out a few pieces for a small charge?

Also I know that my DS gives stuff to other kids who don't bring ingredients in.

I'm confused, Kitty. Is the teacher counting on not having all the kids cook, because there is too much for them to do on their own, without the technician? Or is it too much for the teacher to supervise if the kids do their weighing out in class?

Another Food Tech teacher here. I agree with everything JOHN THE PONG says.
Weighing would take half the lesson and not be weighed correctly therefore disastrous outcomes and wasted money.
Selling small amounts of ingredients is very sensible and something we do at my school.
Our technician comes on a bike. She would need a trailer to shop for us!
We put all our recipes in grams and ounces as some parents/carers do work in the latter.
Last weeks classic - Parent phones up to say why are we asking them to bring ingredients in for things no family would eat (Lasagne) and if she wanted to her family to eat one they sell them frozen in shops. Now I do buy frozen food as well, but she didn't seem to grasp her child was going to be actually learning many skills from making a fresh one.
Thank you to all parents who do support Food Tech.

In my neck of the woods, we pay a certain amount for the year and all ingredients are provided at school. Works fine. This is what happened when I was at school too.

The dds use scoops to measure many ingredients and if that isn't suitable they use scales. This is from year 7.

can't believe all these cookery baskets with frilly covers. I have never even seen one. I have visions of little folk in uniforms dancing along with baskets like Little Red Riding Hood. We weighed at school and I don't remember bringing ingredients in ever.

What I do vaguely remember is having to cook a meal in pairs and invite two teachers of your choice to eat it for lunch. Am not sure now whether we took it out on the much disliked French teacher or whether we invited ones we liked.

I hated the cover, but my mum still has the basket.

My main memory is of how bloomin heavy it was and how difficult to carry across town to 'Albert Road' - where they did such lessons. Then (once I'd finished cookery of course) they built a new block for cooking etc on the main site, and called it Albert Road.

Omg! just came back to the thread. Flapjacks not flashbacks.

ZZZen - I did feel very much like Little Red Riding Hood.

Nowadays I use it when I'm feeling particularly twee or Blyton-esque.

I love it!

yes, I am feeling I missed out

This is normal. My dd did it most weeks last year. Luckily we usually had what was needed until they got onto more complicated stuff. I would ask her on Friday what she needed for cooking and she'd say she didn't know yet what they were cooking..... The last time, I read her the riot act and told her she'd have to go in without them and take it on the chin. DH went to Tesco at 6.30 in the morning to get the stuff though ( as he thinks I'm a tough old boot ). She's remembered since then.

It got so that I knew I wouldn't have to cook that night as dd would be bringing it home. Then her group stopped cookery and started gymnastics, so now I have to wait until next year (sigh).

I always felt deprived because I didn't have a basket with a frilly cover, and now I feel deprived all over again! I remember making breakfast too.

I was very impressed with DSs cooking at school, they learnt lots of skills. He had to take ingredients too, list was pinned to the board when he came home the previous week and it was his job to prepare it the night before. Spices etc he could buy from teacher

The food poisoning thing made me think. Apparently DSs ingredients/finished meat dish were placed in a cool room type thing. Ours were just left aroud all day and I don't remember anyone ever being ill from 'cookery'.

YANBU. I am sick and tired of the stuff that I need to buy for DS3 "food technology" class. Why do they nor just call it cooking

I do not mind the container. I do not mind the stuff that we normally have in the house. I do mind the stuff that costs ££££. Such as 1 tsp saffron strands, 1 tbs Golden Syrup. WTF how do we send that to school? Oh, I forgot, we send the whole tin/packet and it gets used up by the other kids who forgot their own tin.

Get a fucking grip. OK, teach the children how to cook - but properly.

Where is the budgeting and cooking for balanced family meals?

For ZZZen and Raspberry - buy it, you know you want to...

Admittedly, the cover's not frilly, but that's what your (grandma's) sewing machine is for!

We never trusted either DS to remember, buy or pack their own ingredients. Hey ho.

To be honest, it never occurred to me that the buying etc was the homework . Both boys were still at the catastrophically disorganised stage in yr 7, where it was a miracle if they knew where their planner was. Both still needed the sort of help that had an adult at home stripping them down to search for crucial notes daily, and another adult at school searching them for homework at the other end. And neither had the sort of social nous that would have let them (arrgh) speak to a more organised child (let's be honest, you probably mean a girl here) about sharing ingredients. Frankly, making a learning opportunity out of the cookery prep wasn't top priority

DD, on the other hand, is going to be doing the lot. Bwahahahaa

FolkGirl

I do so want to buy it. Might show it to DD and see if I can use her as an excuse!

I had the same rant this morning - I'll willingly send a fiver in if means I dont have to look stunned @ 8pm wondering why I'm such a slovenly mother and dont have saffron (yes, bloody saffron!) in my cupboard!