What is it that our young need to know? Going by the current curriculum, they need to have sophisticated Maths and English skills, advanced science including the anatomy of a mouse and they need to know how to draw, use the internet and understand advertising.

OK I’ve simplified it. I’m being silly (I blame too much education…)

One thing’s for sure: they don’t need to know how to cook. Because from my knowledge of what schools teach, they’ll never need to feed themselves.

For weeks, they’ll be asked to bring in the same stodgy ingredients: flour, margarine, milk, salt…

The variations on this are pizza, scones and bread. To my knowledge bread doesn’t have margarine in it. Does it?

This is the extent of someone’s imagination. My conclusion is that whoever decides on what to teach in ‘cooking’, can’t cook.

Is the assumption is that families live off pizza? Because we don’t. None of us can stand it.

And with the number of people allegedly suffering from wheat/gluten intolerance, I have to wonder why. Again.

In the time they have in the week’s timetable, I can think of fifty good recipes which are nutritious, take knowledge of cooking/preparation processes and are actually edible.

Who says the children have to come home with a complete meal (which pizza isn’t)?

Stir-fried mange tout with ginger and honey. Simple potato salad. Couscous with almonds and sultanas. Grilled, skewered chicken fillets (vegetarians can bring in aubergines or something they like.) Spaghetti Carbonara… I could go on.

Even just braised carrots with a slab of butter. Something which tastes good and will potentially develop a palate which will in future mean people will err towards properly cooked food.

But the issues, parents are told, are the time constraints and possibly the fact that staff think it important children come home with their work. If it’s nice, yes.

Otherwise I feel it’s a waste weighing and packing up my carefully bought ingredients to have it massacred and served up in a gory mess called pizza.

Some families eat very well. By this I mean someone shops carefully and puts time in to creating food that everyone looks forward to. I’m a damned good cook frankly. And my daughter is proficient in the kitchen.

Sure, someone could argue, some families have no skills at all (do they live off Iceland pizza?); schools are teaching children basic cooking.

A bit like the PSCHE part of the curriculum. (How to wash sort of thing.) Because the education wise men can’t risk not introducing the basics to children who may be very neglected at home.

But by that argument, shouldn’t we then also just teach our young adding, the alphabet and basic human biology?

I want a plausible explanation for this curriculum free for all.

And school dinners still leave a lot to be desired. Anyone accustomed to eating proper home-cooked food will support me in this.

If the aim (again) is to provide the proportion of neglected children with something that resembles good, hot food the menu-makers are way off.

One mother remarked to me that it was the sort of food she might consider providing when in a tearing hurry. Fish fingers. Oven chips. Tinned peas.

Anyway, I don’t know where I expect this to lead.

I’m convinced food is a vital part of learning. It’s part of the way we care for ourselves and our families.

Food concerns aesthetics, indulging the senses, colour, form and a unique creativity which entails buying say, a lumpy bag of potatoes and a bland-looking tub of cream and turning them into Potatoes Dauphinoise.

So I’m not suggesting it’s taken out of the curriculum.

Oh la-di-da, the others will be smirking. Smirk away.

Anyone who’s eaten at my house leaves reeling and eager to return.

I may not remember how white blood cells do their work or what a scalene triangle is or what Namibia is famous for. Seems not to matter.

What has mattered since I left school and lived away from my parents (both astoundingly good cooks) is how to prepare and assemble ingredients so they are delicious, healthy meals. A really basic skill.