AIBU To pull my son out of food tech?

[Summerishere123]

To pull my son out of food tech.
My son isn't a bad cook at home, but at school most of the dishes are costing between £5-8 to make and are inedible. We have also lost 3 containers because of kids just grabbing whichever one looks best rather than their own!
AIBU to refuse to send stuff in from now on? He is only in year 8 so we have at least another year of this shit.

I always save the plastic roses / quality street tubs from around Christmas for sending ingredients in & I always portion the ingredients down so it’s just one portion of a savoury dish or half amount for cakes etc, my DS then scoffs it for lunch / they share the cakes at breaks.
I agree if you go with whole recipe it can get really expensive & if it’s crap it won’t get eaten, if it’s his lunch I think he takes more care 😆

I send my two in with old ice-cream containers or re-used takeaway containers. Buy the cheapest ingredients you can find.

Lol.

Put your name on the container

Thank goodness you've rocked up 7 pages in with this novel idea.

The container is named. The kid isn't organised enough to keep track of his own container, much like my son who has ADHD. The stuff my kids cook at their school is hit and miss but a lot of it simply isn't cookable within a 50 minute lesson that includes prep and cleaning up. I've had to finish off chicken that was very undercooked when he got home. Like someone else said the kids have all touched each other's ingredients so you don't really want to eat it and it is expensive stuff. I'm with you OP!

The fruit pie with the ready made pastry and tin of stewed fruit is still part of the year 7 curriculum in two different schools my kids have been to. One was made just this year and I agree with your mum. Utterly pointless! I really fail to see what they learnt from unrolling a sheet of ready rolled pastry and spooning some apple onto it from a tin.

My daughter has ADHD and while she has lost books, pencil cases, trainers, jumpers, water bottles, you name it (and yes it is all named!) she is very motivated by cooking and has never failed to complete a food tech recipe successfully nor to bring it and its containers and spare ingredients home.

The teacher is very good and highly organised though.

The truly hilarious thing at our school is that the kids are not allowed to weigh anything out, it's all been done for them. We don't send ingredients, just pay per dish.

This seems A lot of money.
At DS’s secondary school they tend to do a term of each of graphics, term of food, term of textiles, and the old woodwork
For the food term, it’s a £20 contribution at the start of term and then school buys the stuff
graphics - nothing required as done on computers
textiles - tends to be old clothes they make stuff out of
woodwork - this is wood, plastics and metals and they haven’t asked for any stuff for this.

id contact the school and say you feel it’s too much. In terms of the tubs we just sent in like a Chinese tub but to be fair they eat most of it 😂

You should only heat meat once after cooking, but you can freeze it and reheat it. That is the rule.

At least you've found somebody you can be unkind to. Good night.

I can't believe they still get the kids to make this kind of stuff, it's not teaching them anything useful or God forbid, healthy. With the amount of processed meals people eat, and how many people have issues with food and their weight the UK has, they'd be better learning stuff like shopping on a budget, meal planning and prepping etc... and then maybe some easy things like veggie soups. Expecting parents to spend £5-8 a week is bullshit. There should be bulk buying of ingredients by the school (maybe parents paying for that once a term, those who can afford it), and there's the first lesson right there, economies of scale. God, I've turned into my mother, it's official.

I think that it is a good point about schools funding the ingredients. Ours would always have been cheap if you choose the veggie option, but even a couple of pounds is a strain for some families.
However, we dont have the other issues people mention. DD makes edible things in 50 mins. They are mainly normal practical stuff. Bolognese, curry, cakes, biscuits etc. The only weird one was a strange sort of biscuit cheesecake-like thing. She is learning to cook simple useful stuff. We heat them through very thouroughly and eat them. We had what she made today for tea. It was nice. DD forgot to collect a couple of times in Y7, but that is on her (I told her to get it nxt day). She doesnt like having to take the stuff in (a hassle she says), but life sometimes means doing stuff you arent keen on.

People often say they want schools to offer practical options - this is one. It is a popular GCSE at her school. She definetely isnt chosing it, but others get a lot out of it.

Were you home schooled or something?

Absolutely no indication that every other child gets there sooner in OP’s post. It only requires one child who is a ‘taker’ to get there before her DS and there could easily 10 kids in his food tech class who have a different subject to him at the end of the day that’s closer is closer to the food tech classroom.

Food tech is notorious for being inedible. My kids buisness teacher would refuse the “radio active” offerings given to him after food tech 😂 honestly there’s no need for the bitchiness.

See the OP's post where she said the one he brought was the last remaining so he assumed it was his.

And, no I wasn't home schooled, which is how I know sometimes you have to move one step ahead of people are taking your stuff.

Eta and I already referenced the possibility that DS was nor able to get there as fast - I used the example of an individual music lesson. But she needs to at least ask him what the issue is in getting there promptly if his is getting taken and it is causing such an issue op wants to withdraw him.

I think the ingredients should be bought communally by the school, and parents pay their share weekly/monthly/termly, as they are able. It’s cheaper for everyone that way.

My son spent 2 or 3 years just making very expensive cheesecakes. Complete waste of time.

1. Have you spoken with the Food teacher or head of department?
2. Not all schools can bulk buy and provide ingredients as in 1 hr students cannot weight out and make something. Without a technician the teacher will be shopping and weighing constantly.
3. Store cupboard ingredients such as herbs, spices, oil etc should be provided as buying a jar of nutmeg for half a teaspoon is ridiculous.
4. Containers as the OP says are labelled but students at the end of the day just grab and go. There should be a member of staff controlling the pick up of items as lots of students rushing in and out can be dangerous.
5. Whilst some students do produce sub standard items they are usually the ones not listening and following instructions. The number of time pastry has turned into slip as they just pour loads of water in or cheese sauce has burnt bc they don’t keep stirring!
6. Recipes should be affordable and teach a range of useful skills that can be applied to a range of dishes.

I suggest speaking with the teacher and highlighting your concerns. A well planned Food curriculum can be enriching and educational but unfortunately there are barriers outside a teachers control that can cause issues such as the one raised by the OP.

@paddlinglikecrazy I think (but would need to check) the plastic used for chocolate packaging tubs is likely to be PET rather than PP, which isn't great to store oily and/or acidic foods in, fine for transporting an onion and a carrot to school in, but there are better options for storing the finished product. Takeaway containers, large yoghurt pots, margarine tubs, etc. where the plastic is already in direct contact with food, are likely to be PP and much less likely to leach things you don't want in your food into your food.

Of course you can learn to cook without a teacher. You can watch and help your parents. You can read a recipe book or watch a YouTube video or similar.

Glad this is now over for the time being for me with teens now through year 9. It’s a pain in the arse sourcing the ingredients last minute most of the time and they always want it measuring out first at home and taken in like this. How the fuck do you transport a tablespoon of oil to school? Just so silly.

Sorry, rant over… Get a bundle of mega cheap containers from b&m. I feel your pain but doubt you’ll be able to pull him out.

After teaching this subject I can tell you nothing is edible. Not due to the quality of the cooking or baking but due to the fact that nothing gets washed properly, the kids put their hands EVERYWHERE

Plast his name or sticker over the container.
If its that badnto eat he needs to keep at it.
Thats a low cost for food.

chilli not cooked long enough? Finish it off at home

mac and cheese congealed? Uh huh!!!!

losing containers is annoying but that’s life

you can afford hello fresh so £5-£8 a week isn’t going to break you