Shareen Campbell and Phil Saunter, owners of Los Gatos and Bistro Les Chats in Wood Street, talk about life in the restaurant business.

WHEN we were at school in the 60s, school canteens were full every day with pupils sitting down to a hot two course meal with the teachers.

Children learned how to eat socially and, with guidance from the teachers, learned some form of table manners.

The meals were cooked by an army of staff, mainly women, in the extensive school kitchens. During the school week, many of the pupils would have at least one lesson of "domestic science." They would not only learn to bake cakes, scones and biscuits, soups, sauces and stews and plan a week's family shopping and cooking, they would also learn how to make and mend clothes, use a sewing machine and devise a household cleaning schedule.

In some schools, the boys were not allowed this option; in others, the classes were mixed, or not open to all.

We both had the pleasure of Latin classes instead and had to teach ourselves how to cook!

When our kids were at school in the 90s, "home economics" had been and gone and been replaced by "food technology," in a misguided effort to create an academic subject out of an essential life skill. Now we have a generation of 20-somethings who, at best, know how to mix up a packet of pizza base mix and spread a jar of topping on it. They call this cooking.

We don't. Our children have had to learn the hard way, how to feed a family for a week on one chicken.

At last the UK government has woken up and, as well as reintroducing free school meals for all young children, cookery will be compulsory on the national curriculum from September 2014. From primary school onwards, a new generation of children will, in theory, be taught to cook nutritious healthy meals. How successful this will be, when they are the children of the generation who statistically spend more time watching food TV than actually cooking, remains an open question.

We look forward to the day when our grandchildren will be able to cook us a decent meal, when we are too old and tired to do it ourselves!