Two Primary 2 Critics Judged the Toast on Jam

The toast was homework, of a kind. Hutchesons’ runs the Junior Duke, created by a primary teacher, Mrs Dawn Waugh, and launched in 2007 for Primary 4 to 7; it now has a level for every primary year. Each level is a booklet of ten life-skill challenges, of which a child must complete seven. Among them: budgeting for a week of packed lunches, fixing a puncture, planning a trip by bus or train, cooking dinner, washing the sheets, using less electricity, picking up litter and planting food. By 2022, the school reported, almost 28,000 children in 20 countries were doing it.

Twenty-eight thousand children, all coming home to wash the sheets. In twenty countries, a parent is standing by a washing machine saying “not like that”.

The magazine accounts are the best part. Another Primary 2 pupil discovered proper shoe polish, having usually used the shortcut sort; her dad protected the area with kitchen paper first, which is the most realistic sentence in any school publication. In 2018 one pupil doubted that the bustle of her house would ever leave time to learn how the washing and ironing got done. Another baked bread on snow days when, she recalled, there was none in the shops.

I printed a home edition for our youngest, who is eight. Puncture: we had one working bike, and now we have none. Packed lunches on a budget: £11.40 for the week, of which £9 was crisps. Sheets: washed, at 90 degrees, with a red sock that came in as a stowaway. Using less electricity: he turned off the fridge. I turned it back on, and we have not discussed the litter.

He has signed off seven. By my count he has done four, and I have done five, two of them after he went to bed.

He chose to finish on toast. He made me a slice, watched me eat it, and marked it on the back of the booklet: 4 out of 10. Needs more jam.