Pizzas galore!

The £150 million will be used to build new food technology teaching areas and to recruit and train 800 new specialist teachers.

Phil Vickery, the chef who has written the foreword to the cookbook, said: “Cooking is a skill and often it is not learned at an early enough age. Once you can cook the basics you will have the best survival tool in the box to take you into adult life.”

Cookery is currently compulsory in primary schools and secondary school pupils are entitled to learn it if they want. Ministers began an overhaul of school meals after Jamie Oliver, the television chef, campaigned against the poor-quality meals being served in canteens.

Margaret Morrissey, speaking for the pressure group Parents Outloud, said that MPs had ignored earlier calls to save school cookery from “extinction in the curriculum”.

She said: “Now we have an announcement cooking is back. It is criminal that politicians can continue to ruin our schools in this way, ignoring the professionals and parents who fought hard with teachers to retain cookery lessons.”

Packed lunches are less likely to be healthy than school meals, research published by the British Dietetic Association indicates.

It said: “Children taking a packed lunch to school consumed approximately double the amount of sugar, and 50 per cent more sodium and saturated fat than those having a school meal.” The research, led by Dr Gail Rees, from the University of Plymouth, found, however, that primary school children bringing their own lunch ate more fruit.

It said: “School meals were much lower in sugar and salt but children taking school lunches also consumed lower amounts of some important minerals, including iron.

“They were much more likely to eat vegetables while pupils eating packed lunches ate more fruit.

“Intakes of calories, protein and starchy carbohydrate were very similar in both.”

Risotto for 11-year-olds

Method: Peel and chop an onion; slice mushrooms; peel and crush garlic. Fry onion and garlic in oil until soft. Add the mushrooms and fry for two minutes. Stir in the rice. Mix stock powder with water and add a little to the rice. Keep stirring until it is absorbed. Continue until the rice cooks – 20 to 25 minutes. Stir in parmesan and thyme.

Skills: Using the hob, using a knife, preparing an onion.

Times Recommends

• Oh no, Mr Darling: you have failed
• BBC survives dogfight over Kennel Club expose
• Where the Rosetta belongs can’t be set in stone