Early support helped a pilot agribusiness programme at St Paul’s Collegiate School expand into secondary schools nationwide.
Almost 20,000 students have studied agribusiness at high school in New Zealand over the past eight years. Nine percent of those students progressed into related tertiary study, and 30% have entered primary sector employment.
AGMARDT has been a strategic business partner of the initiative since 2014, when it was a pilot programme of just 44 students at St Paul’s Collegiate School in the Waikato. By 2024, now called Agribusiness in Schools, 125 schools were teaching agribusiness to 3450 students, more than two-thirds in urban areas.
“If we didn’t have early business partners like AGMARDT, we wouldn’t have got off the ground,” says programme director Kerry Allen. “AGMARDT was one of first to come on board, and as an organisation that represents the whole agricultural sector, that mana played a factor in giving other organisations confidence to come on board.”
AGMARDT joined DairyNZ and Beef+Lamb NZ as founding partners, followed by 18 additional supporters including major banks, processors and other sector organisations.
“AGMARDT was one of first to come on board, and as an organisation that represents the whole agricultural sector, that mana played a factor in giving other organisations confidence to come on board.”
– Agribusiness in Schools programme director Kerry Allen
St Paul’s, a mainly rural boarding school, had surveyed parents of the student body in 2013 and learned about concerns the needs of students who wanted to enter the primary industries weren’t being met. An advisory board was formed to identify what was required to prepare students for university and employment in agribusiness, rural banking, farm advisory, and related fields. Along with adding agricultural and horticultural science to the school curriculum, in 2014 St Paul’s piloted its first full agribusiness course for Year 13.
As the course attracted students and began to prove it could meet primary sector needs, the school approached the Ministry of Education with a proposal to take the programme nationwide. “We let them know schools weren’t meeting primary sector needs, and we showed them what we were doing. That’s not normal!” Allen recalls. “The Ministry tells every school what they should be teaching. There was no process to follow, so we spent a lot of time jumping through hoops.”
By 2018, the programme had rolled out nationwide to 12 schools. St Paul’s developed teaching and learning guidelines, and Agribusiness Achievement Standards were set at NCEA Levels 2 and 3.
The course is transdisciplinary, encompassing science, management, economics, digital technologies, marketing, and international trade, while developing soft skills like innovative thinking and collaboration.
Some schools focus more on primary production, such as those with on-site farms or gardens. Other schools develop added value products in-class, such as camembert cheese and biltong. The main limitation is teacher capacity, says Allen. “Not just anyone can walk in and teach it. Ideally, it’s someone with a bit of background in agribusiness.”
Sam Howard credits his agribusiness teacher Roy Gawn with putting him on a path from struggling student to international export professional. After graduating from Mt Aspiring College then Lincoln University, Sam took a graduate role in international supply chains at Silver Fern Farms. He is now pursuing opportunities in the UK – an example of how the programme creates globally minded professionals.
Some of Agribusiness in School’s most exciting successes may yet emerge from the entrepreneurial thinking and innovation encouraged by the programme. Students are supported to invent a product and take it to market. It runs a ‘Dragon’s Den’-style pitch competition called Crocodile Pit, with winners entering the Fieldays Young Innovator of the Year Award.
This wasn’t AGMARDT’s first support for high school agriculture education. In 1993, an AGMARDT grant supported The Correspondence School to develop a teaching programme for 7th form agriculture and horticulture. 32 years later the school, now known as Te Kura, still teaches primary production via distance education.
Grants:
- L15009 3 year Sponsorship
- L19003 Continuation of strategic partnership
- L21005 Assisting Secondary Schools in NZ to Teach Agribusiness
Dates: 2014 – 2025