Cooking lessons will be compulsory at secondary schools as part of the Government’s strategy to fight obesity.

All 11 to 14-year-old pupils must learn how to make at least one healthy meal, ministers have announced.

Schools will have to introduce packed lunch guidelines, cracking down on parents who provide crisps, fizzy drinks and chocolate.

The Government wants the public to recommend dishes that should be taught in schools, although suggestions have to be healthy, easy to prepare and palatable to teenagers.

But teachers’ leaders said that the move has come too late, as many schools built or refurbished in the past 15 years have no cookery rooms. There is also a shortage of teachers qualified to take classes.

Domestic science was an integral part of the timetable until the 1980s. Children were taught how to make such staples as Victoria sponge, and proudly took home the results. Since then classes in some schools have been phased out or replaced by design-led lessons about food production.

Many cookery teachers have left the profession. The Government wants 1,000 more food technology teachers by 2011, but recruitment is difficult as they must also be able to teach other technology subjects.

Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary, said that the lessons were part of the strategy to tackle obesity. He wants to draw up a top eight of recipes that teenagers can make.

Teaching unions criticised the plans, however. John Dunford, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: Just six months ago, ministers promised heads greater flexibility in the curriculum for 11 to 14-year-olds, saying more decisions about what to teach would be made at school level. Now they have created another entitlement and more compulsion for this age group.

As many of us said at the time, the Government should never have down-graded practical cookery 20 years ago. For example, it substituted ‘design a picnic’ for the skills of making picnic food.

In the intervening years, schools have been built or refurbished without cookery rooms. It will be impossible for them to put practical cookery on the timetable. There is also a shortage of cookery teachers, who will take time to recruit.

A spokesman for the Professional Association of Teachers said: “Schools will be concerned about how cookery is to be squeezed into an already overcrowded curriculum, and about the purchase of equipment from dwindling budgets. There are practical concerns about what will happen if children fail to bring in the necessary ingredients”.

Figures released by the Design and Technology Association suggested that 5 per cent of schools lacked food technology rooms or qualified staff in 2000. Since then the figure has risen to 15 per cent.

From September every 11 to 14-year-old will have cookery lessons in the 85 per cent of schools that offer food technology classes. The remaining 15 per cent will be expected to build facilities or arrange for their pupils to learn at another school by 2011. Children will also learn about diet, nutrition, hygiene and food shopping on a budget.

Fiona Beckett, an author and expert on food for students, said: “The Government always talks in terms of food like shepherd’s pie and chilli con carne being proper meals, but the world has moved on since children were last taught cooking in schools. They’re much more likely now to want the kind of food they would eat in a restaurant or takeaway dishes like fajitas, risotto or spicy noodles”.

Seven Kings High School in Ilford, East London, teaches food technology to all 11 to 14-year-olds, and up to A level. The lessons are linked with other subjects, such as a Chinese week that the school is holding next month. Sir Alan Steer, the head teacher, said: “We’ve invested heavily in the food area. I see this as vitally important”.

Isaac Kallom, 14, who takes food technology GCSE at the school, said: “I like making cakes. I didn’t know how to cook before, but now I go home and cook for my parents. They love it. I’d like to be a head chef”.

Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk

The arguments for compulsory cookery lessons in schools are endless, when considering our concern for improving the nation’s health, however I can understand the cost of introducing this to many schools will be crippling. We have to ask ourselves, which is more important - cost or health? Personally, I believe, without good health, everything else is pretty much useless!

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