'Huge Interest': Calls For Agriculture To Remain Standalone Subject At Year 11

The principal of a 1700-strong high school where half the students are studying agriculture at Year 11 wants to see it reinstated as a standalone subject.

Feilding High School's principal Nathan Stewart said agriculture was a huge part of the school's history.

"Feilding Agricultural High School was started in 1921 and so it's a huge part of our bones and who we are," he said.

The school also has a 98-hectare farm, running dairy cattle as well as sheep and beef.

Stewart said there was always "huge interest" in the subject.

Agriculture's not only offered as an academic NCEA subject but through Primary ITO, students can train on farm for one to two days a week.

Along with horticulture, it's offered all the way from Year 9 through to Year 13 - with one in two students enrolled in the subject at Year 11, widening to one in six at Year 13.

While he agreed with making Year 11 a "broader curriculum" - adding it had been getting "splintered" - Stewart said agriculture was an applied science so shouldn't simply be folded into a general science course.

"In an era where science and technology are our future, science is a big enough subject as it is without trying to merge agriculture into it. And vice versa, agriculture itself is a massive subject.

"It's a great opportunity for our kids to study our largest export earner and get ready for their future in agriculture if that's something they choose."

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Removing agriculture as a standalone subject, he said, would reduce its visibility, particularly for students from non-rural backgrounds.

"We're a rural town but we're still a town. It gives our town kids an opportunity to study something that perhaps if they weren't at this school they wouldn't have [to study]."

Stewart said merging subjects like commerce, economics and accounting made sense, but agriculture should be as "aspirational" as dance or other social science subjects had remained as a single subject.

"Just as dance, drama, and music are recognised as distinct disciplines, offering agriculture as a standalone subject at Year 11 signals its legitimacy and importance, even if it remains optional, as in the arts."

To the current curriculum advisors and the experts saying agriculture doesn't belong, he said, "we would say it certainly does belong in New Zealand schools".

The Ministry of Education curriculum centre's deputy secretary Pauline Cleaver said Year 11 science will be compulsory, meaning all students will get agriculture-related learning.

She says at Years 12 and 13, agriculture and horticulture and a new industry-led food and fibre subjects, can be taken as part of the new qualifications supporting pathways into further study, training and careers in the primary industries.

Education Minister Erica Stanford echoed these comments, adding the advice from education experts was that Year 11 was too early to specialise in individual sciences.

"The primary sector is critical to our economy, and we have ensured that the refreshed National Curriculum provides a comprehensive pathway for the farmers of the future."

Meanwhile, ACT has said it will campaign for agriculture to remain a subject in the Year 11 school curriculum.

Agriculture spokesperson Andrew Hoggard said for many young people in towns and cities this may be their only structured chance to learn how the industry works - over 60 percent of students taking the subject were based at urban schools.

"Removing agriculture as a Year 11 standalone subject sends the wrong message."

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