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.

Yeah maybe.

However the review of education by the government in 2024 states that all schools will have to teach NC.

So it’s just a matter of time.

The review hasn’t yet (and may never) resulted in change though.

I usually found that most of the ingredients tended to be things we had in anyway, which was useful when I got asked for them at 8.00 the night before!

I agree, and some of the things they cook are ridiculous. Nobody “needs” to learn to cook a cheesecake - they should be teaching them to make economical healthy meals like soup and pasta

Low income families don’t have to pay for ingredients.

Not entirely true. Incredibly low income families may not have to, but low income families often do.

We have to provide the ingredients - some weeks more expensive than others but your list is about the same price as some of ours. It doesn’t really bother me - we all make an effort to eat the food when it’s brought home so doesn’t go to waste. I assume those on FSM can apply for help towards costs? I’m hoping my fussy eater son will do food tech for GCSE as it really helps him become open to new things.

Define "low income".

I can see how making an 18 portion cheesecake will really help with that.

YANBU OP - its a ridiculous amount of money for a cookery lesson when so many families are struggling to make ends meet.

Like others, mine had to supply a sum for the term and only needed to take in containers and occasional extras. They were not making luxury products with expensive ingredients.

There doesn't seem to be a way to inform school of fsm for ingredients help - i'm sure school would have said if that help was offered.
Hopefully we'll eat & enjoy the oversized indulgent choc & strawberries cheese cake 🤣

My child is making raspberry buns tomorrow

So I've just bought self raising flour, caster sugar, raspberry jam and bun cases. I've already got an egg at home. I'll use some of our butter we've got at home

DS had to take on average 80p in per week and then a max of about 3 ingredients.

So for crumble he just took a tin of fruit and the cash covered the crumble mix. Cheese straw type things he took an egg and some cheese, I think. Worked quite well.

You do.

I didn't realise parents had to pay or children had to take ingredients in. It never happened at my school growing up and doesn't happen at DC school now! Must cost a fortune.

I never understand why its not possible for the school to supply ingredients and for people to pay, for the ones where only a small amount of something less common especially.

It would take the Home Ec teacher or support staff five minutes to do an online order, or someone could add it to their own grocery delivery and they get reimbursed with the money brought in.

Far better than 30 students all buying a pot of mustard powder to use a pinch and have the rest languish in the kitchen cupboard until the end of time. Such a waste and the complete opposite of what the class is supposed to teach.

Also why do they make such ridiculous things? It's not hard to come up with a list of basic 'student cookery' type recipes to learn about making healthy food on a budget which is an essential life skill that can have an enormous impact on health and financial stability for life.

I think DSis is still sore about the time DN had to take the ingredients for fruit salad in winter which meant she ended up spending a good chunk of her limited grocery budget on whole punnets of out of season strawberries, grapes, plus a melon, apple, orange and banana so they could supply 6 strawberries, 12 grapes, a slice of melon and half each of the other items. Normally they'd only buy one or two of those things, not all of them in one go.

Sounds quite sensible except tinned fruit? Crumble mix?

Whatever happened to peeling and chopping apples and rubbing butter into flour?

The school my daughter was in didn’t provide ingredients for fsm. I was low income and used to dred the shopping list! The extra expense every week for cheesecake, fruit salad, pizza etc BUT the one I’ll never forget and it still grinds my gears 15 years later…. Sausage roll… Just roll pastry and skinless sausage!! Absolute joke. I told my youngest DD she wasn’t allowed to take food tech and I’d teach her how to cook at home.

3 x tubs is a lot, this is my cheesecake ingredients:

1 200g tub Philadelphia cheese (or supermarket own brand cream cheese, or mascarpone for a special occasion)
1 small tub (75 ml) double cream
½ packet digestive biscuits
½ pack butter
75g caster sugar (can use any sugar for taste but caster is smoother)

Flavouring – fruit syrup, lemon juice, cocoa powder, or pureed fruit

I'm thinking back to my cookery lessons (that I hated) and in what would now be year 7 we did make puddings and buns, but we only had an hour or so.

It was a bloody pain getting the ingredients together. There was a thing where a teacher would 'buy' the food made. So the teacher brought in the ingredients, the student cooked then the teacher took the meal home.

My cousin and next door neighbour started secondary the same day as me (different schools) one made a sandwich the other made toast and a cup of tea.

They both sound like crap meals but they are a start and ensures an 11 year old can make a simple snack / meal.

I think it is a difficult one for schools, you have children who may never have cooked and some who can do a full roast, then you have the GCSE syllabus, then you have the costs.

Maybe in year 7 and 8 it should literally be a cooking lesson so you go in to year 9 with a number of recipes to feed yourself and a number of recipes to feed a family of 4/5.

I don’t suppose it’s possible for parents to teach about healthy meals and how to cook? Or are you another parent who thinks schools are responsible for everything in life? Don’t you lead by example and cook healthy meals and involve your children? Cookery lessons are about skill sets and the theory behind it. All lessons lead to GCSE choices and the skills you need to learn to achieve a high grade. For GCSE they need to be able to produce a 3 course meal, relevant to the topic and be able to justify their choices.

And not use strawberries in October when they’re out of season, and what’s available are tasteless and watery

That was one,of my greatest bugbears when my kids were at school, there was no common sense applied to seasonally available food

Badly, in our experience. Our son's (now y10 so no more cooking thank the lord) school has the worst "cookery" lessons I've ever known. Among the terrible things he made were sausage rolls (please send sausage meat and ready made pastry), roasted veg (please send your choice of veg ready chopped), cookies (which they ran out of time to finish, the teacher finished them and when they were collected at the end of the day, someone else took my son's and he was left with a tray of burned ones) and jam tarts (please send ready made pastry and ensure you've loosened the lid of the jar at home). Absolute waste of time and money.
On the other hand, my older nephew's school asked for a small contribution at the beginning of term so no last minute rushing out to buy ingredients that the child forgot to announce. Apologies- this has little to do with the main thread but thought it might make someone chuckle/ roll their eyes

And who is going to pay for the order if the school places it? It could be over 200 children they are buying ingredients for each week and there isn't the money available to do that. As for teachers adding it to their own bill, can you imagine how out of pocket they would be each week when nobody pays.

But does the GCSE content have to start in year 7? Maybe have some theory lessons and have a bit more flexibility with the cooking.

I'm thinking something like a stir fry with noodles. You could say 250g or fresh veg and it could be anything. Well almost, not potatoes.

You would need to put slightly different timings for different veg. A small packet of noodles is about 50p but if you have larger packs at home then let the students bring those in.

Add in a lesson or part about what else you could add eg meat, tofu, some tinned veg and how to make it feed more people.

I remember my mother having to buy stuff for me to cook at school, thankfully we only did cooking for a short while, it wasn't considered to be an academic subject and nobody at my school ever did it to 'O' level.

A waste of time and money in my opinion. One learns to cook naturally, bit by bit, school shouldn't be wasting time on it. A cookery club maybe, that's a different matter and voluntary.

However if that is what happens at the school you have chosen, you have to get on with it. Take heart, it won't be forever.