Agriculture to stay a standalone subject at New Zealand high schools

Agriculture will remain a standalone subject at New Zealand high schools, Education Minister Erica Stanford has confirmed. The decision reverses an earlier plan to fold Year 11 Agriculture into general Science. Year 11 is the first year of NCEA, the national secondary school qualification.

Stanford said the Ministry of Education had advised that Agriculture could be part of the general science curriculum at Year 11. She said Horticulture and Agriculture Science needed to be a standalone subject so that it could continue into Years 12 and 13, the senior years of school.

An earlier Government announcement described a Year 11 Agriculture and Horticultural Science subject that would be optional, sitting alongside compulsory Science. Beehive

Rex Newman, president of the Agriculture and Horticulture Teachers Association and an agricultural teacher at Napier Boys' High School, said he was glad that common sense had prevailed. He said he hoped the outcome would settle issues around the two subjects.

Nathan Stewart, principal of Feilding High School, has pushed for Agriculture to be reinstated as a standalone subject. At his school, half of the students study agriculture in Year 11. RNZ

At NCEA Level 1, the first level of the qualification, there are four science subjects, and Agriculture and Horticulture Science is one of them, according to a Ministry of Education document.