The new series of The Great British Bake Off sparked an unlikely education debate last night after revealing that one of its contestants uses her cakes to help teach geography.
Alice Fevronia, a teacher from central London, is among the favourites to win the latest GBBO series, which started on Channel 4 last night.
Yesterday, the show’s Twitter feed revealed how she uses her baking in her lessons to demonstrate coastal erosion.
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It said: “Then: Geography lessons involve a PE teacher telling you to copy out large chunks from a textbook in silence. Now: Cake.”
A video showed Ms Fevronia’s class sitting with cakes at their desks while she tells the lesson: “Using your spoons you are going to be the erosion, the waves.”
The idea of using cake to learn caused a reaction on social media with one post replying: “I’d be 1000% engaged in this lesson.”
But there was also an edutwitter debate on the practicalities of using cakes to teach erosion.
Among those questioning it were geography teacher and Tes columnist Mark Enser.
In a blogpost, he said that using cake or biscuits was very common in geography lessons.
“Have a look on a geography teacher Facebook group and you’ll find plenty of people bringing out the biscuits or the cakes as a fun way to teach different physical processes.”
However, he also questioned the value of using cakes to teach in this way.
He added: “I have been there. I have taught lessons using cake. I have used biscuits to show the action of plates. I have done trading games with sweeties. It was fine. No one died (I checked for allergies) and the kids enjoyed eating some cake.
“It took much more time than I should have spent and cost more money, too. The kids didn’t learn as much as they would have done and I largely had to teach what needed to be taught first or go back over it all again later. I’d have been better off just finishing the lesson five minutes early and sharing some cake.”
Ms Fevronia is not the first person from the education sector to brave the GBBO kitchen.
In 2016, teacher Candice Brown won the competition before deciding to leave the profession to become a full-time baker.
And last year, Department for Education civil servant Luke Thompson was among the contestants.
However the 30-year-old amateur baker from Sheffield was the second person to leave the show after having trouble with a sponge base during “Cake Week”.
