Boyup Brook District High returns to farming education after 20 years

ABC NEWS (Australia)

A rural school in the Southwest of WA has reopened its farm program after shutting it down 20 years ago. Boyup Brook District High School students are able to learn foundations of farming through completing their Certificate I in agriculture. WA has become the first state in the country to introduce an ATAR agribusiness course, alongside agricultural science and technology.

Transcript

00:00A classroom fit for crops and high school students.

00:08Boy Up Brook District High School has reopened its farm program two decades after it was

00:14shut down.

00:15That's just great, we've learnt skills that I might have never learnt how to do.

00:19Giving students a chance to learn about key industries in their community.

00:23Learning about soil depth.

00:25I'd like to be in both farming and the shearing industry so I can, you know, just experience

00:34a lot of things to do with the farming and agriculture.

00:37As well as getting first hand farming experience, students have been able to enrol in their Certificate

00:431 in agriculture.

00:45It can help me with understanding on different things, like I don't do much cropping myself,

00:50I'm more on the cattle side of it.

00:53But yeah, it takes me to new farms that I haven't been to.

00:56I guess it's good to add extra experiences to the students, help students to be able

01:01to pick schools after Boy Up.

01:03It is fun, but yeah, you get to work with a bunch of different people that you wouldn't

01:06normally work with, I guess, yeah.

01:09Students today have come out to watch a local farmer plant barley.

01:13The crop behind me is a part of the Boy Up Brook Community Cropping Initiative, which

01:17is all about raising funds for local sporting facilities.

01:21But today, it's about something else.

01:24It's giving these students that on-farm experience.

01:27The community in Boy Up group want it and they need it and the students love it.

01:31They constantly ask, can we go up the farm?

01:34Can we go and do something on the paddies?

01:36It's also proving to be a way of increasing student engagement and enrolments.

01:41The Cert 1 in Ag is the most popular course.

01:44We have quite a lot of the Year 9 and 10 students electing to do the Ag course.

01:48Last year, we had zero Year 10s remaining in our high school.

01:51This year, we had 13.

01:53Yeah, this is better than Math and English, I reckon.

01:55A town proving it's not all about pens and paper.

01:58A town proving it's not all about pens and paper.

Category

Transcript

Recommended