School cooking lessons

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School cooking price of ingredients!
Dc new to high school, cooking this week.
Cheesecake:
Butter £1.08
Biscuits £0.60
Soft cheese x3 £4.02
Strawberry £2.48
Cream £1.40
Chocolate £2.87

Other bits from kitchen- icing sugar, vanilla essence, tin etc.

Shocked at the cost tbh. Not a problem here but lots of families couldn't afford this fortnightly could they? I grew up in poverty and couldn't afford school cooking ingredients.

God, this reminds me of my mum’s reaction to my class making tirimasu for food tech. It cost £8 for the ingredients in the late ‘90s and she still talks about it today! It was fine but it’s not an essential dish to master and she was a single mum to 4 kids and it was a big chunk of our food budget for the week.

Nobody needs to know how to make cheesecake and especially not if it costs that much!
Why can't schools just focus on teaching children to make healthy nutritious meals instead of puddings?
My DS learned to make things like soup or bolognaise. Don't ever remember him making a cake or pudding. He's an adult now, a great cook and very rarely makes anything sweet but could if he had to.
Schools need to focus on teaching budget friendly, home cooked, healthy meals so we don't end up with another generation of unhealthy eaters who know no different.

Even back when I was in high school starting in 1997 food technology was rarely ever about learning how to cook and was more teaching about health and safety.

In my daughter's class they work in groups and split out the ingredients. So in your case they would bring a tub of cheese each and one would bring the butter, one the biscuits, etc.

I was at school in the 70's and we had to pay for our ingredients. However, for some reason my half of the class only ever seemed to make 'non bake' foods - I seem to remember a lot of fruit salads! We did do a jam tart once. The other half the class, who cooked during the winter term, got to make Christmas cake, Christmas pudding, mince pies...

Good job my mum taught me to cook, because if I had to rely on what I learned at school we'd never have got past endless fruit salad.

When I was at school the idea was that we made a dish that we could take home to feed the whole family, not an individual portion for one person. That was how the school justified making our parents shell out for the ingredients, by pointing out that they were essentially getting a family meal out of it.

I agree it’s a bit on the pricey side for a pudding though, and I’d hope it wasn’t that expensive every week! And that they’d make some dishes like pasta etc that use the kind of ingredients most people are buying anyway and would be more likely to have in the cupboard already.

I think it’s good to show kids how to make simple dishes like a no-bake cheesecake, but it would also be good if their lessons included making something simple on a budget.

So far over y7-8 my son has done:

vegetable noodle stirfry
carrot muffins
pizza bagels
savoury rice
sweet potato soup
guacamole

He already had decent, safe kitchen skills as he helps cook at home. I’d rather they were learning about sensible portions, meal planning and recipes to reduce food waste

Yes, to sweeten the soft cheese so it tastes like a dessert rather than cheese and crackers.

Oh Good God, DCs food tech lessons were the bane of my life. Not so much the cost, more them telling me at bedtime that they needed some obscure ingredients to take into school the next day. Many a last minute run to the supermarket...

Oh !
You learn something new everyday 😂
I love cheesecake but I've never actually made one in my life.

We’re asked to give £10 contribution for the year. It’s much easier than taking all the ingredients and causes no issues with people forgetting or bringing the wrong things. I do wonder how they subsidise it though as there will be families who don’t/can’t pay.

I think it’s one of the most important lessons. My DS missed them due to covid and has no interest in learning from me. I think school lessons would have helped a lot.

Doesn’t seem to bad to me as you’d get a cheesecake to take home after. I’d have thought they’d use pupil premium to pay for those on low incomes.

Same when I was at school re the family meal
My parents still talk in hushed tones of horror about the pancakes with cheese sauce, where after an afternoon of sitting sweating in the cloakroom, and a trip home on the bus, you could lift the whole sauce with a fork like a giant round cheese Frisbee.

When I was doing Cookery in school in 90s we had to bring in the ingredients but were paired up so you brought in half and the other person brought half. We were encouraged to shop around to get the best prices. To be fair though we made things like quiches rather than cheesecake.

Turns out dc is making a cheesecake that will serve 18 🤣

Turns out I'm making a cheesecake that will serve 18 🤣

If it helps cheesecake freezes well in case you don’t need to eat it in one go!

My children's school asks for a yearly contribution towards ingredients such as oil, but we've never had anything provided, so I stopped paying it.

They also insist ingredients are weighed out before being taken in, which surely defeats the point, as you can bet it's the mum doing that at home for a lot of kids.

So far, we have had to provide ingredients to make chilli nachos with jarred sauce (!), and some pizza-type thing, which was essentially cheese on toast.

Tbf to my child they do the list, weighing & measuring at home independently. With me moaning in the background to tidy up.

Freezing is a good call thanks!

They have to provide it by law!

For those moaning about cheesecake. They only have one hour. So can’t really make anything to cook unless it’s frozen for the next week.

Cheesecake is perfect for an hour.

Those ingredients sound so expensive and enough to make a cheesecake that would feed about 10 people! I think they should have made small cheesecakes with 1 pack cream cheese, just a few strawberries and small bit of chocolate for decoration etc.

We have to buy and bring in the ingredients. There hasn't been anything that was really expensive though, probably the most expensive was chicken meatballs but that was only 1/2 small pack chicken mince, 1 tablespoon curry paste etc. Other things were hummus, lentil soup, muffins etc.

YANBU - I remember once having to buy a bottle of saki because my youngest neaded a tablespoon of it for a receipe she was making in school.

It's a shame because as a PP said, it's a chance for some children to shine, doing cookery/home economics lessons.

Ex-Food Tech teacher here.

FSM, EHCP and PP students always had food provided for them at my school.

Bulk ordering via Tesco etc is always the way to go to save money BUT I never had time to do it and most schools are struggling to hire Technicians let alone actual teaching staff.

Schools are VERY tight with budgets, hence lots of staff being laid off and high-cost departments like D&T/Food Tech/Art/Music being mothballed.

My biggest bug-bear was getting kids to bring in a bloody container to take their food home in!

Enjoy your kids food creations while they last!. Give it a year or so and MOST schools wont be able to provide Food Tech lessons at all.

@ArseInTheCoOpWindow

I didn’t know this! I suspect there is some sort of loophole with that school as it’s new…or rather it was. DD started there in year 7 and has now finished A levels. DS is now in year 11 and won’t be staying post GCSE. There were delays with certain buildings in covid etc so I bet they have got out of that one on a technicality due to facilities. I really didn’t know this though. Makes it even more infuriating.

My kids school gave up teaching it when the teacher left. They provided a cover for the lesson but they just did their maths homework. For 6 months.

Now on the upside I didn't have to provide all the ingredients - but I thought it was really piss poor that this valuable life skill was so easily dismissed.

Legally they might of had to teach it - but they just didn't bother.