The death of the home economics teacher...a recipe for cookery crisis

21pc fall in staff triggers health warning

CONCERNS have been raised about a generation of Scottish children not being taught to cook at school.

Labour claimed youngsters could be missing out on ‘life skills’ after its figures showed a 21 per cent fall in the number of home economics teachers in the past ten years.

Experts raised fears about obesity and said the subject’s demise could be contributing to a generation turning to ready meals and takeaways.

The figures published today show there are now only 786 home economics teachers in Scotland’s schools, compared with 990 in 2007.

Scottish Labour’s inequalities spokesman Monica Lennon said: ‘Under the

‘Important for pupils to learn life skills’

SNP, we have seen teacher numbers plummet across Scotland.

‘There are more than 200 fewer home economics teachers since the SNP came to power.

‘Home economics is an important subject for pupils to learn life skills, but also should form part of a wider early intervention strategy against childhood obesity.

‘Teaching our young people about nutrition and how to cook healthy meals is the sort of step that could reduce the stress on our NHS in years to come.

‘The SNP promised to make education its top priority but it has been completely side-tracked by ministers campaigning for a divisive second independence referendum.

‘They should be focused on the bread and butter issues – like making sure our schools have enough teachers.’ Schools in some parts of Scotland are facing a recruitment crisis as they struggle to attract teachers.

Those staff specialising in home economics – as well as those teaching maths, physics and Gaelic – were among those said to be hardest to find last year.

In addition to teaching children to cook, home economics classes also focus on healthy eating and other family and household skills.

The Scottish Government has provided free school meals to all Primary 1 to 3 pupils since January 2015. It said the policy was designed to ‘ensure every child has the best possible start in life’.

But Tam Fry, a spokesman for the National Obesity Forum, said: ‘I’m very concerned that there has been such a big drop in home economics teachers.

‘We are living with a generation who came through school ten years ago and now need to feed their families but can’t cook, so rely on processed food that is high in salt and sugar and that is leading to obesity.’

He added: ‘Free school meals are terrific and great attention is being paid to that – but that is children being served food. It is not about them understanding how to do it themselves when they are older. That is why home economics is so important.’

A Scottish Government spokesman said: ‘Although teacher recruitment is a matter for local authorities, we recognise some areas face challenges filling vacancies in certain subjects, which is why we have taken decisive action to recruit and retain teachers and widen the pool of talent.

‘This includes investing £88million this year alone so every school has access to the right number of teachers, an additional £3million to train an extra 371 teachers in 2017-18 and committing £1million from the Scottish Attainment Fund for universities to develop new routes into teaching.

‘This includes the introduction of a new home economics programme at Perth College UHI.’