Agriculture to go in more school homework

More agriculture exercises will be introduced in secondary school classrooms to encourage urban school leavers to take up careers in the primary industry.

A study programme for teachers to use agriculture examples in their lessons has been launched, with 15 secondary schools signing up for a pilot.

Accredited resources initially in science, English, mathematics and economics are expected to be delivered to teachers for the start of the new school year and will initially be for year 9 and 10 students. Over the next few years this will be phased in to NCEA Levels 1, 2 and 3 students and cover a range of curriculum areas based on school and teacher feedback.

The agriculture material will be mainly based around the red meat industry, but programme organisers want this to expand to other sectors of the primary industry. The Red Meat Profit Partnership, consisting of industry organisations and meat companies, has teamed up with New Zealand Young Farmers to deliver the Education in Agriculture programme.

They want to open up career paths in agriculture science, innovation, marketing and other areas to young people.

Young Farmers chief executive Terry Copeland said the ‘‘best and brightest’’ students had to be attracted to the red meat sector and agriculture.

He said the rapidly changing red meat sector was New Zealand’s second largest exporting category and vital to the national economy, but it continued to need talented school leavers to retain its market advantage.

‘‘It’s not just gumboots and working on the farm. There are so many opportunities in engineering, science, marketing, management, technology which is needed to take this product in this industry to new levels.’’

He said teaching tools accessible by the web were being designed so secondary school teachers could raise red meat examples in the classroom and expose top students to it when they were choosing their careers.

A mathematics example might use genetics focusing on sheep

We know how many schools offer agriculture, but that’s not enough and we need to attract people who normally wouldn’t gravitate to agriculture.

Terry Copeland, Young Farmers chief executive

weight for lamb production. Agriculture was a NZQA subject but tended to focus on grass roots farming and there were other agriculture opportunities, he said.

‘‘We know how many schools offer agriculture, but that’s not enough and we need to attract people who normally wouldn’t gravitate to agriculture.

The programme is part of a $65 million project over seven years to advance the red meat sector with 50:50 goverment and industry funding under the Primary Growth Partnership.

Copeland said generating more top students to agriculture would be a major part of the government’s target to double the value of exports to $64 billion by 2025.

That was expected to create 50,000 jobs across the industry and would need an existing workforce of 230,000 being upskilled to new roles. Of the 750,000 new jobs needed to make the target 60 per cent would be outside of farming and processing.

Copeland said young people often wanted to make a difference when they first looked at career choices and agriculture provided this with its ability to feed the world.

While New Zealand was targetting affluent consumers in the 40 million people it could feed, the innovation being generated also benefitted people in poorer countries, he said.

He said 36 per cent of all secondary school students were in the Auckland area and the primary industry needed to attract more urban students just as the military had sharpened its marketing to make it a top career choice.

Programme advisor Rod McMillan said the partnership group was ambitious for the programme to succeed and have an impact on the 450 secondary schools in New Zealand

The launch was the start of the programme and eventually every school would be approached, he said.