The new secondary curriculum introduced in September 2008 focuses food technology on practical cooking skills and knowledge. In January 2008, the Government announced that as part of their obesity strategy, food technology will be compulsory for 11 to 14-year-olds from September 2011. Cooking is already compulsory in primary schools.
The Licence to Cook programme delivers a training programme for teachers and supports collaboration between schools that offer food technology and those that currently do not so that more 11 to 16-year-olds have the opportunity to learn how to cook. We have also announced £150,000,000 ring fenced capital investment to build food technology teaching areas in secondary schools currently without facilities and £750,000 for new facilities fro teacher training providers to enable us to reach our target of providing around 800 training places for food technology teachers in the next three years.