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Hello year 9 and parents guardians and welcome to this presentation on Food and Nutrition GCSE.

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I'm really pleased that you are interested in finding out more about what this particular course entails here at Swanmore.

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So our GCSE is called Food Preparation and Nutrition.

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It is examined by the WJEC, that's the EDUCAS board and it will take you through an adventure of all things to do with everything we eat and drink, what is the nutrition in our food and what do we need?

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So I'm hoping that this will give you a little bit of a taster of what is to come and if you have any questions please don't hesitate to get in touch.

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So what is our GCSE?

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Well it's going to provide you with the knowledge, the understanding and the skills that you need to prepare and cook a great range of food really safely.

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We will use a wide range of different food commodities, we learn all different cooking skills, lots of different techniques and we use a wide range of equipment.

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It's designed to help you understand the relationship between your diet and health, between a range of loads of different factors that affect our food choices.

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How old are you?

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What do you enjoy eating?

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What is your religion?

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What is available for you to have at the moment?

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We look at how different factors affect us.

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We look at foods, for example, functional and nutritional properties of our food.

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What actually is it that our food does?

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What is the point of the egg in this dish and how is that helping this particular

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cake to rise for example.

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We look at applying food science principles.

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How does bicarbonate of soda work?

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How does it make honeycomb?

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We look at how to prepare, how to process, store and cook food safely and we also look at some different culinary traditions from around the world and we study the different ingredients and the cooking techniques that are used as we go.

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You can see from the pictures there that we also include everything from choux pastry and presentation right through to learning how to debone and joint a chicken,

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so it's quite a varied course.

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When you choose to study GCSE Food Preparation and Nutrition, you will cover these six areas.

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The first is our food commodities.

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So these are the basic elements of what make up our food.

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So our dairy products, our eggs and our poultry, soya and tofu, cereals and potatoes, fruits and vegetables.

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We look at the principles of nutrition.

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So our macronutrients, our carbohydrates, our fat and our protein, and our micronutrients, our vitamins and our minerals.

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We look at diet and good health and the choices that we make and how our health is affected by the food and the drink that we consume.

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We look at the science of our food.

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When you put that piece of steak on the barbecue, what is the science of the sizzle?

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How does it all work?

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We think about where our food comes from, our food provenance, the environment, carbon footprint, sustainability.

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Why would we choose to buy a fair trade product?

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And we also look at our cooking and our food preparation.

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So not only how we use our senses to evaluate our food, but also how we use knives in different ways, how we prepare all of our breads, how we fillet our fish.

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So these are both theory and practical lessons, because what we study in a theory lesson, we then have a practical lesson to back that up.

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So for example, if we are learning about caramelisation, we will look at the theory behind what happens when we heat sugars,

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and then we will make millionaire's shortbread.

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One question that we're often asked is how much practical will I actually do?

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So we'll have six lessons a fortnight and we will usually cook twice during this time.

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Sometimes that will be an hour one day and an hour the next day and we'll make a part of a dish one day and carry it over to the next.

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Sometimes it's a whole dish in an hour, sometimes we'll freeze things in between.

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The practical lessons are always linked to the theory and they will always develop your skills in a wide range of cooking techniques.

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So everything from deboning chicken and filleting fish right through to bread making and shaping.

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We look at making sauces, we make mayonnaise and hollandaise.

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There's lots and lots of practical that we do.

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There are 20 skills areas that we have to complete during the course.

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We practice them more than once and every practical uses a different combination of these every time you cook.

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And this means that you can then select your strongest areas when you make your final choice for your three examined dishes in year 11.

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You will learn everything from chopping to choux.

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So what is it that you need to be successful on this course?

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Well you need to be really committed to taking part in this course, not just in studying the theory, but also taking time outside of your lessons to further refine your practical skills.

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It is lovely to be able to cook, but it is really important that you understand all the theory behind it as well.

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You need to be interested in food and nutrition.

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You need to really enjoy learning about the what and the why of food, as well as enjoying the preparing, the practice and the cleaning up of dishes.

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A positive attitude, a willingness to adapt to change situations, it's a real benefit.

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A sense of humour is also extremely useful.

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You need to be able to just deal with anything that happens in a lesson in the kitchen.

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You are always responsible for what you are doing.

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It's great fun and we really enjoy our lessons, but we also need to remember that we are responsible and we take care.

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We look after each other and we look after our areas and we make sure that everything we do is safe, but we always end up with something that is guaranteed edible, even the mistakes.

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That's how we learn.

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How is your GCSE assessed?

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Food Preparations and Nutrition is 50% coursework or non-examined assessment, called an NEA, and 50% written examination.

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In year 11 you will complete NEA1 and NEA2 in the autumn and spring terms.

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NEA1 is a food science investigation worth 15% of your total GCSE.

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The photograph on the right here is showing two of our year 11s undertaking their food science investigation into the use of raising agents in scones.

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They had to investigate what raising agents were and then see what happened when they used different raising agents in different quantities to make different batches of scones.

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They compared them, we looked at the taste and the texture, the aroma and the appearance and they wrote up their findings.

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NEA2 is the practical task worth 35% of your total GCSE.

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This allows you to research, prepare and cook three dishes in three hours and then evaluate this against your peers' work as well.

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This is the big three-hour cook-off when you have lots and lots of time to prepare for these dishes and plenty of time to practice as well and this is your sort of final showstopper if you were.

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Both NEA1 and NEA2 are teacher assessed in school and then they are externally moderated.

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The written paper is an hour and 45 minutes long, is entirely externally marked and covers all of the theory on the course.

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Both of these marks are then combined together to get your final GCSE grade.

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So what can you go on to do?

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The brilliant thing about food and nutrition is it doesn't matter whether or not you are thinking, I really want a career in catering, or actually you just love cooking.

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You want to expand your skills and knowledge.

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You want to be able to cook healthy meals for you, your family and friends.

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You want to go to university and be able to do more than just heat up some chicken nuggets and chips.

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You may want to be on Come Dine With Me.

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Of course, also there are loads of college courses, there's apprenticeships, there's fantastic opportunities with so many armed and civilian services.

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There is a really wide range of careers in the food and hospitality industry.

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There are practical chef courses.

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You might be interested in working in a hotel or working in catering management, opening your own coffee shop.

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You might want to design and make your own cakes.

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You could also be interested in becoming a dietitian or a nutritionist or a food science.

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You could also be interested in working in brand management.

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We look at marketing as part of our course.

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There are so many things that you could take this forward to do.

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So here just to finish off are some examples of our past people's work.

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As you can see, we do everything from sweet to savoury.

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We have examples of fish filleting, pastry making, choux making, gateau making, setting a mixture using eggs in coagulation.

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What I can tell you is that yes, this course is hard work, but yes, it is excellent fun and we look forward to welcoming you onto it.

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Please ask if you have any questions and hopefully we will see you in September.

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Take care, Year 9.

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Bye.