DD has food tech practical on Thursday. She's 'learning' to make fairy cakes. Here is her list of ingredients to take in.

[MaureenMLove]

2 eggs
a shop bought fairy cake mix!

And the point is? Thankfully, my dd knows how to mix flour and eggs and sugar together to make cakes, but how and what on earth is that teaching to those who's parents don't have time to show their lo's.

Can't wait until she's learning to make hot pot or something at school. She'll learn the art of stabbing a plastic lid with a fork and setting the microwave timer for 5 minutes!

I'm sure the teachers hands are tied by time, safety and Ofsted, so I'll forgve them. Especially, since its Yr 7 and its not all about the practical side of things.

Thankfully DD is a fab cook already, because she helps and learns from us.

I could weep.

Yes quite! Do think of me, when I'm being a good Mummy on Thursday night, eating the damn things!

How about timetabling so as to allow enough time for cooking? When I was at this age, we had a double cooking period every other week, and a double period of something else the next. This allowed time for teacher's instructions, cooking, sampling the food and a summing-up discussion at the end.

I had Food Tech today with year 7 - such wimps. The amount of complaints that 'my arm hurts' or 'it's not working' when trying to cream together butter & sugar by prodding it with a spoon!

And the number of squeals of horror at the sight of....raw egg was unbeliveable

DD made a pizza from scratch (ish)

They used SR flour, and egg and milk, and did cut corners over using just Tomato puree, but it was a good attempt for a first cookery lesson. they got to pick their own toppings

I work teach in a DT dep. Our food teachers sometimes get moans like this.

They want to teach with real food. The problem is timing. They don't even get an hour for a lesson. Weighing, mixing, creaming, putting in cake cases, and coooking will take them over the amount of time they have in a lesson.

Sometimes they mix it one week and freeze it, and defrost it the next lesson, but it's not ideal.

They often have to use Smash rather than real spuds because of this

I work teach in a DT dep. Our food teachers sometimes get moans like this.

They want to teach with real food. The problem is timing. They don't even get an hour for a lesson. Weighing, mixing, creaming, putting in cake cases, and coooking will take them over the amount of time they have in a lesson.

Sometimes they mix it one week and freeze it, and defrost it the next lesson, but it's not ideal.

They often have to use Smash rather than real spuds because of this

I work teach in a DT dep. Our food teachers sometimes get moans like this.

They want to teach with real food. The problem is timing. They don't even get an hour for a lesson. Weighing, mixing, creaming, putting in cake cases, and coooking will take them over the amount of time they have in a lesson.

Sometimes they mix it one week and freeze it, and defrost it the next lesson, but it's not ideal.

They often have to use Smash rather than real spuds because of this

Why do school children still cream butter and sugar with a wooden spoon? Who does that in a kitchen these days? Can't they invest in electric mixers?

I have a vivied memory of doing this turgid task in primary school and saying 'I can't do it' and the teacher saying 'there's no such word as can't'. Nobody does that unless they have a Cath Kidston-esque personality disorder.

crikey, if you need to save time, use an elecgric mixer. We have progressed beyonf Mrs Beeton

I don't think they have enough........

electric mixers are cheap. Pitch it as 'new technology', incorporating ICT into home ec.

well no, not ICT I suppose. Just T. Call it Education for the 20th Century, Moving Slowly Toward sthe 21st

I don't teach it....... but there is no money

get the home eccy kids to run an enterprise project to raise money for a few mixers. We're only talking a couple of hundred quid.

Would that not class as a H&S ishoo?

Years ago, when I was at school, we used to weigh out all the stuff at home, so that cut back on the prep time. I'm sure many of the food tech teachers, would much rather cook from scratch, but they just don't have the hours to do it. I'm sure the lessons were longer than an hour and we did 'cookery' every week too, not just for a term like most schools these days. They just don't have time to get much further that fairy cakes and pizzas. If she takes it as an option, it'll get more interesting.

you can make fairy cakes in an hour.

there are cookbooks galore with titles like '30 minute meals'. I don't quite see why an hour is so little time.

it might be to compare a mix with one from scratch though - our students do this

am I the only one still wielding a wooden spoon then? are you lot all on magimixes?

Not on magimix - I think my hand mixer was about a fiver from Asda.

It's really slow unless you hit the boost button though.

Like Mercy my first Home Ec lesson was scrambled egg, toast, tea, etc. And I made puff pastry and roux, etc.

Perhaps schools which use Food Tech (bleurgh) as part of DT need to look at their timetable properly and realise that, unlike an acrylic keyring or a wooden table, in cooking you can't put it to one side for a week so a 2-week timetable, for example, which allows extra time for some subjects, would work much better.

An hour does not = 60 minutes cooking time, though.

We have 50 minute lessons which = 10 minutes getting to classroom & farting about, 10 minute teacher explains task, 20 minutes cooking & 10 minutes clearing up...

(& don't even get me started on what PE colleagues have to say about our 50 minute lessons!)

Doubles? Triples?

Our home ec, iirc, was a triple. From about 11am to 12.55ppm. Ditto games - and we used to travel off-site.

Our lesson periods were 35-40 mins each and we were expected to move quickly between lessons. There were 8 lessons a day. We didn't even have a 2-week timetable or an allowance for moving between lessons. But we did cookery for half a year and needlework for the other half. Now the same school - diff timetable - manages to squeeze in all that acrylic stuff, metalwork, woodwork, cooking and sewing.

Makes perfect sense to me too SueW - 8 periods a day, double & triple them up.

For complicated reasons our senior management won't hear of it...