The news that agriculture and related technology studies will now be a mandatory part of the school curriculum in NSW couldn’t come at a better time.
As this drought grinds on, concerns have been raised about future tertiary agriculture enrollments, especially given the drop-off that was seen in the early 2000s due to the Millennial Drought.
This will also help bring the conversation about food and agriculture back into peoples’ lives, as their children bring the conversation home, helping to grow empathy between city and country.
Longer term this has to be a boon for enrollments in specialist agriculture schools, especially those such as Farrer, Hurlstone and Yanco due to their superior ag facilities and existing base curriculum, as well as for universities which offer agriculture related courses.
Related reading: Students to learn about food and farming in new ag curriculum
While it has taken five years since the Pratley Review recommendations were handed down (which also recommended a new ag and technology school be built at Dubbo), it is promising to see the community, teachers and students have been consulted, and that support is being provided to help teachers grow their own understanding of agriculture.
In a lot of high schools, agriculture has all too often been seen as a bludge subject, but this move sends a message from the Department of Education and the Education Standards Authority that agriculture is an important industry with serious career path potential.
This will hopefully be helped by the overlap with agriculture, technology, digital and engineering in the curriculum.
The initial roll-out of the new syllabus includes kindergarten to year 8, but the idea is to set those kids up to choose agriculture and related subjects as electives later in high school, with the syllabus for those later years already being planned.
While those students who have an interest in agriculture will likely pursue it as a career path anyway, this opens the door to those who otherwise might not have been exposed, or whose parents can’t afford to send them away to a specialist boarding school.
And with a need for more maths and science students as well, the practical grounding a student gains in agriculture will help them understand the application and relevance of the pure sciences as agriculture provides an opportunity to see those skills used in the real world.