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!

Neither will ours. Getting them in takes about 5 or 10 mins, talking about it and demo 10-15 mins, actually doing anything about 25 mins pleinary 5 mins, clearing up 10 mins (not really long enough)

But we can't have double lessons because English and Maths prefer shorter ones. Also a double lesson of nearly 2 hours is fine for older kids, but youngers ones and naughty ones find it hard to maintain concentration for that long

I still use a wooden spoon, morocco

At dds school (she is in year 7) they have a rolling programme of cookery. It's very well organised.Lessons are about an hour. The teacher demonstrates one week. The following 2 weeks the class(of 14 pupils) are split into 2 groups and they cook while the other half of the class does some sort of written activity (as there are only 3 cookers)

SHe has made cakes, biscuits, soup (from scratch) macaroni cheese (not from a packet), pizza (didn't make the base)oat bars,apple crumble and sausage rolls (that was puff pastry from a packet.

She is definitely beginning to learn the basics and really enjoys cookery now. I feel that has come from school.

Being asked to bring in a fairy cake mix for food technology is utterly ludicrous.

I would be inclined to send her in with all the ingredients ready mixed at home by her and cook that.

I don't really see why its up to the school to teach children to cook at all. I think its up to parents.

I remember my first school cookery lesson well - cheese on toast. Ingredients: one slice bread, handful cheese. Guess which ingredients I forgot - both! Teacher supplied me with a spare slice of bread and I nicked borrowed a bit of cheese off everyone else - I had the yummist!

Next lesson was shepherds pie. Ingredients (which I remembered that week): one tin of mince, one packet smash. . Method and approx time taken: open tin and pour into casserole dish: 30 seconds; pour smash into bowl, add boiling water - 1 minute. Mix - 1 minte. scrape into casserole dish - 1 minute. Total preparation time: 3.5 minutes.

Then lark around for 40 minutes while pie is cooking. Go to next lesson. Return at home time to collect said pie to take home. Stone cold by this point, so parents have to re-heat it for tea. Yuck.

But Fairymum, it is going to be taught in schools.

The government want people to learn how to cook again, as they feel that this has been lost. So very soon (next year or year after) it is being reintroduced as a new thing not as food tech. My colleagues are just going on training courses aabout it. I'm not sure whne it is going to happen, but I know it's imminent.

It is to teach chidren to prapare meals from scratch focusing on filling, healthy meals

I'm beginning to think our school's food tech lessons are better than I thought!

In years 7-9 children have one DT lesson a week, always a double period so 110 minutes. They alternate between the 5 DT subjects. At GCSE level they choose one DT subject and have one double and one single lesson per week.

When it's food tech, at least every other lesson is a practical one. Quite a lot of 'real' cooking - bread, pizza, cakes (both making and icing/decorating), pasta sauces, pastry dishes, stir fries, I could go on.

There must be at least 13-15 cookers in the room, because pupils share so it's two pupils to one cooker.

The other lessons are written work, demonstrations, discussions.

My only gripe is that some of the food tech teachers say rubbish things (e.g. sweeteners are better for you than sugar) so my children always seem to end up arguing with them!

when I was at school we had a mix of single periods and double periods. Practical activities like home eccy were always double periods. That's just common sense.

Cooking is a great life skill and lots of people make it into a living and go on to do related cvourses and training. Of course it should be taught at school.

Well, I've eaten the packet mix cakes and guess what dd told me? She had hers in the oven first, so helped a boy make his from scratch because he didn't take a mix in! It transpires, that they had a choice of doing posh/fancy topping on packet mixes OR just making plain ones from scratch! Dozy moo! She didn't tell me that bit, did she? She wanted to concentrate on the toppings, because she's made hundreds of fairy cakes at home before!

Huge apologies to my DD's school, I completely retract my comment about her learning how to stab a microwave dinner with a fork and look forward to plenty of good food coming my way!

I teach food tech and the complaints I get from parents are because their darlings have not passed on the correct info to them!!! We also give ingedient lists a week in advance but they tell their parents the night before!!

Food tech will compulsory from sept 2011 in KS3. Some schools however from sept 08 will be running the LICENCE TO COOK scheme which is designed to teach filling, quick, healthish and economical meals.

Food tech teachers on the whole do not like the DT aspect of designing foods rather than making but we have limited choice.

We pride ourselves on doing 'proper' practicals in 60 minutes (really 50 minutes)but the other major problem is that a lot of schools do not have trained food tech teachers. I have a scientist teaching this year and an art teacher next year!!! This means you have to simplify work down for them to teach.

With a supportive leadership team it should get much better and I am so looking forward to teaching real cookery again.

Please parents do try and bear with us, we do feel your frustrations. It is good that so many parents cook with their children but so many don't.

for pete's sake maureen! All that fuss for nothing

in what way do you have to simplify the work?

arghh...don't get me started on food tech! have just read the OP's retraction, but don't relax too soon. 2 of my DCs did GCSE food tech (an easy way to get an A, btw) and it was all geared to the food industry, including pointless fictional 'research' showing what kind of ready meals would appeal to different target groups. Last straw was when DS1 had to make a valentines's themed snack for teenagers, he made a sweet, heart shaped pizza topped with

fresh strawberries!!!!in February!!!!and.....

got top marks for it!
Talk about unsustainable tasteless gimmickry.

BTW, I would never, ever lay the blame at the teachers or even the school, for what they do. I know only too well about OFSTED from my childminding days and now work in a secondary school and I am full of praise for anyone who wants to be a teacher of teenagers and work under the some of the silly rules and ideas that Ofsted have!

Glad to hear things will improve DITDOT. Dd will have already made her options by 2011, but she gets more than enough support from us at home and she is a very confident, competent cook.

ONe thing I was dreading about DS doing cookery was getting a list the morning he needed it.
Thankfully the school just asked us to provide £7 at the beginning of term and they provided all the ingredients.

I remember making soup from a packet of dried stuff at school. What a joke. The teacher "demonstrated" making lentil soup, but we didn't get to do it ourselves.

It is ridiculous, but hopefully the point is to compare with home made ones.

I wish they did "home economics" or "domestic science" like I did at school. Just enough sewing and cooking to get you by in life. I thought it was a great subject (bar the packet soup of course!)

when i wa at school it was Home Economics- the class was split in half, 1 lot did cooking while the other did textiles. The lessons were 1 hour a week and the next term we swapped over.

i got an A for my shepherds pie, cos although we had to use Smash I spent ages using a piping bag to make swirls and peaks on mine.

Unfortunatley I put it on the seat next to me on the bus home and my little brother sat on it. My beautiful design was replaced with an inprint of DB2s bum cheeks!

Hi. Hanna flower. You would need a PGCE to teach Food Tech just like any other subject. However I know that I would welcome any voluntary help in Food lessons and you don't need any qualifications because the qualified teacher in the room would be there for insurance purposes.

As for POINTYDOG. Simplifying work is due to the other teachers not being specialists. Believe or not the science teacher could not cook properly!! Therefore demonstrating some techniques was not going to happen. Also a trained Food tech teacher (it is not about just knowing how to cook!!) can demonstrate, watch approx 22 children at once (inc some with severe special needs), identify hazards before they occur, deal with children with no ingredients whilst getting the others on and the most IMPORTANT - get things made and cleared up in 50 minutes. It is a skill that you have to learn.

Even something as simple as flapjack that you could make at home in 35 mins takes nearly an hour at school due to varying abilities. Also they have to wash up - well not many children know how to do that correctly either so that takes time.

I therefore have to simplyfy even the simplest recipes if I have a non specialist just so the kids can take home an edible product and also get to their next lesson.

I do love teaching FOOD TECH by the way.

Example of simplyfing - PASTA SALAD.

Specialist teacher lets them cook their own pasta.

NON Specialist - technician cooks massive batch to share out.

Even something as simple as that has to be done to complete it in 50 minutes as non-specialist can't time lessons well. It comes with loads of experience.

How come schools don't give double lessons over to Food Tech any more? Our lessons at school were 40 minutes, not 50, but we got a double lesson for Home Ec so that there was plenty of time to get things done, cleared up and evaluated. How bizarre to try to get a whole load of kids to cook something in 50 minutes.

Not many double lessons beacuse another subject has to run at the same time as you on the timetable for the rest of the year group that is not doing Food Tech. Often PE so they don't mind but if it is Maths, English, French etc they do not like doubles so we have to suffer with singles!!

We had to get a bigger chest freezer as we more and more have to make 1 lesson and freeze, then finish it the next lesson! 50 minutes is NOT enough.

What a pain! Our school always had double science, so there was plenty of time for practicals and when Home Ec was on, you'd probably have some of the year doing double Metalwork, Art or Woodwork. I really don't believe it can be that hard to organise.

Our deputy head used to spend about three weeks of the summer working out the timetable for each year group with a magnetic board. I bet he still does it that way, rather than use a computer.