Ms Maria Hickey:

It is dependent on the school. I work in an inner city DEIS school and we provide all the ingredients. In other schools, the students bring their own. I have worked in both situations and I would prefer to provide the ingredients. It is cheaper because I buy in bulk, I buy what I need and I do not buy extra. However, it is time consuming to provide ingredients in school because it takes from the time in the classroom. Ingredients have to be weighed and measured in class whereas if the students bring them, they will have them prepared, or they will have been taught the skills to prepare them at home, and they bring them weighed. Both ways work, but it can be costly if they have not been listening to the teacher's advice. We teach them how to buy ingredients in bulk, even down to unit-costing. The bag of flour may cost €2 but to make the dish it might have only cost 30 cent. They learn that as part of the skills as well.