Agricultural teachers should aim for industry experience | OPINION

I'm in an even smaller minority who did a "sandwich course" degree.

This involved, each year, two 12-week semesters on campus, followed by 24 weeks working in industry.

Six months actually with a job in industry had much, much more of an impact that token industry "experience".

In my first year I worked as a lab assistant in the quality control lab at what is now the GlaxoSmithKline Centre at Juniper Hall in Dartford, Kent working on insulin bioassays.

In my second year I was a field assistant at the Unilever Research Centre in Bedfordshire, doing trials to predict the bolting date of spinach from weather data.

My third-year placement was at Svalov in Sweden, working on tetraploid cereal varieties at the Seed Association Centre, but my main input was to check the English of the papers produced by the staff.

RELATED READING

My PhD work, as the HJ Heinz Scholar, on seed potatoes was at the National Vegetable Research Station at Wellesbourne (600 industrial sponsors) so I'm well and truly "applied", and you can see why I have a rather jaundiced view of teachers who have not worked in the real world.

Give them their due, some have accepted that they haven't, and are doing something about it.

One initiative has been the Tasmanian Agricultural Education Network (TAEN). As it says on the web: "Established during 2015 to promote agricultural education in Tasmanian schools, TAEN has transitioned into an association affiliated with the National Association of Agricultural Educators."

"Membership of TAEN is not only for educators but also individuals and groups interested in promoting high-quality agricultural education.

"The core objectives are to:

Taken at face value this is impressive but the sceptic in me wonders what the track records are for each of these seven objectives; taking one at random, how do they actually "improve and promote agricultural career pathways in line with industry requirements"?

I confess I haven't checked this out, but there are many ways of doing this.

One way was the one I experienced in my "sandwich course" where there were staff in industry who, as part of their job, made sure there was effective dialogue.

I wonder if there are any industries and schools in Tasmania which have forged such a relationship - the industry representative would need to be appointed as a part-time member of the school staff (at the university level they're classified as adjunct faculty).

I'll try and check this out.