A BRAND new classroom at a Cumbria specialist school is helping children learn valuable skills for independence.

Wings School Cumbria supports young people with social, emotional and mental health difficulties and has recently invested in a food technology room which is already proving very popular with children.

The school offers placements to children on both a day and residential basis and one of its key aims, alongside helping children to achieve academically, is to help them gain the skills they need for life outside of school.

The food technology teacher at Wings Cumbria explains: “While we do offer formal qualifications in food technology for students, the main aim is to help students learn the skills they will need to live independently when they leave Wings Cumbria.

“They have been enjoying learning the basics of making meals from scratch and often want to practice the skills they’ve learned in the classroom when they return to one of the Wings Cumbria residential children’s homes.

“Working with ingredients and from recipes also supports learning in other subjects, not just food technology of course; there’s maths, science and English all being practiced when we’re following recipes, measuring ingredients and working out how different ingredients interact with each other and how they respond to cooking. We have also been learning about different cultures and cuisines.

“As well as teaching those all-important skills we all need to be able to prepare healthy, tasty food, the new food technology room means we’re able to offer formal qualifications from the National College of Further Education too, adding to the wide variety of meaningful qualifications our young people move on from Wings Cumbria with. Who knows, some of them may get such a taste for cooking that they choose it for their future career!”