The following week, we stepped up a gear with custard and before you knew it we were busy moulding sausage meat into the most inedible scotch eggs you're ever likely to have the bad luck
to eat.

The highlight of the culinary year was a day in the school's flat when our limited skills were put to the test. No doubt the practice has fallen victim to the risk assessment culture, as it involved letting pupils loose in Leeds market to buy food for a menu of their own devising, which was then cooked for two lucky guests and finished off with coffee and a flour fight.

However, amid the general chaos did I learn anything? Well, yes. I learned pastry has a magnetic attraction to nylon jumpers, that it's impossible for an entire class to remember all their ingredients on any one day and that some people – no matter how hard they try – just can't cook. After years of humiliation, Simon Boyle finally cracked and one week swapped his own sorry-looking mince
pies for a batch of Mr Kipling's. His ingenuity earned him a detention.

Sadly, when it became fashionable to rearrange the curriculum at least twice a term, domestic science was shown the door, and the art of scone making, together with the ability to fire tiny pieces of dough through a Biro, went with it.

However, if Schools Secretary Ed Balls has anything to do with it, schoolchildren will once again find themselves back in the kitchen under plans to introduce compulsory lessons in how to rustle up a healthy meal.

From this September, every 11 to 14-year-old in the 85 per cent of schools currently offering domestic science, now rebranded food technology, will be taught practical cookery, with the remaining 15 per cent expected to fall into line by 2011.

While the plans are still in the pipeline, Mr Balls is already looking like a man who missed boarding the Jamie Oliver bandwagon, and teachers' unions have been quick to point out the flaws.

"Just six months ago, ministers promised heads greater flexibility in the curriculum for 11 to 14-year-olds," said John Dunford, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders. "More decisions about what to teach would be made at school level, they said. Now they have fallen at the first fence, creating another entitlement and more compulsion for this age group.

"The Government should never have downgraded practical cookery 20 years ago, substituting, for example, 'design a picnic' for the skills of making picnic food, and in the intervening years, schools have been built or refurbished without practical cookery rooms.

"It will be impossible for about 15 per cent of schools to put practical cookery on the timetable until they have the proper facilities.

"There is also a shortage of cookery teachers, who will take time to recruit."

Practical considerations aside, the scheme is part of the Government's obesity strategy due to be launched today by Mr Balls and Health Secretary Alan Johnson, the idea being that if they are taught how to prepare healthy meals, it will stand them in good stead in later years.

"Domestic science was how I became interested in cookery, but in recent years it has become much too theory-based," says Richard Jones, manager of Bettys Cookery School in Harrogate.

"Two days a month, we open up our kitchens to local school children and they do seem to enjoy it. The idea is that they find out about ingredients, have a chance to make their own bread and then in the afternoon have a tour round the bakery and take part in a taste test.

"Any move which gets children not just thinking about good food, but encourages them to have a go at making it has to be a good thing."

However, for everyone who supports the plans, there are others who've questioned the sense of ploughing millions into cookery in the hope it will somehow reducing the nation's waistline, when in some areas standards of maths and English have fallen through the floor.

"A centralised diktat forcing kids to cook for a few hours a year will do nothing to stop them munching on burgers and fries the rest of the time," says Mark Littlewood, communications director of liberal thinktank Progressive Vision.

"Parents and teachers are far better placed than headline-grabbing Labour ministers to decide how best to educate children about nutrition. The scandalous levels of innumeracy and illiteracy in Britain are far more worrying than the
inability of young people to properly prepare an organic vegetarian quiche. Ed Balls's announcement is no more than
a publicity stunt. And its impact on child obesity will be absolutely zero."