Pupils must learn to cook Jamie-style healthy meals

Last updated at 14:52 02 February 2007


Pupils will have to learn how to cook healthy meals for themselves under a Jamie Oliver-inspired shake-up of home economics lessons.

Education Secretary Alan Johnson will announce on Monday that the ability to cook using fresh ingredients is an 'essential life skill' that all 11 to 14-year-olds must learn.

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Critics have long argued that 'food technology', as home economics was renamed in the 1990s, is too theoretical.

Mr Johnson believes cookery lessons should become more hands-on as part of wider reforms of the secondary school national curriculum.

Pupils will also be obliged to learn about global warming and eco-friendly development in geography - and the slave trade in history lessons.

Mr Johnson said: "Cooking is an essential life skill, something all young people will eventually have to do day-in day-out. It's also a vital part of tackling obesity.

"I want kids rolling their sleeves up and actually getting to grips with preparing simple healthy meals from scratch."

He added: "Young people are interested in cooking and with role models like Jamie Oliver on our TV screens there is no reason that we can't get more kids cooking."

The drive for proper cookery lessons, inspired by Oliver's Feed Me Better campaign and better education about food, has been endorsed in a major review of the 11 to 14 curriculum by exams watchdog the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority.

Other parts of the secondary school timetable will also change in September next year. Geography lessons in Key Stage 3, as the first three years of secondary education is called, will be rewritten to put 'saving the planet' at its heart.

The announcement comes as the UN published the final report of its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change today.

'Sustainable development' and other issues such as global poverty will become the focus of the lessons.

Mr Johnson said there would be no 'dumbing down' of geography - as 'core' knowledge and skills would still be taught.

The original aim of the QCA's review was to give teachers more choice over lessons for 11 to 14-year-olds to eradicate the 'drift' during the first three years of secondary education in which bored pupils became disaffected - long a concern of ministers and education watchdog Ofsted.

But ministers have become more interventionist, stipulating themes that must be taught - to the irritation of teachers, who suspect them of chasing headlines with little thought for the impact on schools.

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