Welsh Ag Education Review

A review lead by Professor Wynne Jones into how learning is delivered in further education colleges providing Level 3 Agriculture courses and the relevance of the course material to farm businesses in Wales.  The review looked at skills gained in the colleges (certificates etc) as well as ongoing personal development for students that had left furthereducation (and farmers who had not gone onto any further education). Professor Wynne Jones came up with a number of recommendations in order to integrate the education sector in with the agriculture sector, which are summarised below:

Accepted by Welsh Government

1.  Improve the uptake of apprenticeship programmes in Agriculture in Wales
2. Increase integration between research and development and the ag. Industry in Wales, through Farming Connect etc.
3. The strategy group to pay particular attention to Level 3 education and to look at (in the medium-term) of setting this as a minimum qualification to set up a new farm business.
4. For those already in the industry, to commit to ongoing professional development in order to keep up to date with the latest r&d in the industry. 
5. Invite tenders to develop an accreditation framework for all CPD activity in agriculture in Wales.
6. Personal Development Plans should be encouraged as pre-requisites to having courses funded by Farming Connect.

Accepted in principle or in part by Welsh Government

1. The 3 main colleges providing Level 3 ag. Education to co-operate to develop their course structure to make it more relevant to “real life farming”.
2. Develop a group through levy-funded bodies, further and higher education colleges, NFU/FUW, YFC, Farming Connect to form a strategy to moving education provided to “agriculture-plus” rather than “land based”
3. Exploit joint resources by increasing collaboration between the colleges and higher education universities in Wales.
4. Staff development in Further Education Colleges through the “Advanced Training Partnership” to provide technical and professional development in agriculture.
5. Create a database of all ag. Students from Wales to assess the supply and demand of young people in agriculture in Wales.
6. Conduct an audit of online educational material and if insufficient material, tender for the development and delivery of such material.
7. Engage in discussion of establishing a GCSE in agricultural science.
8. Improve the impact and dissemination of materials to schools.Trying to make agriculture a “first choice” career.
   
9. Create a “learning village” in the Royal Welsh Show to help portray agriculture as an “aspirational career”. 

The full report can be found at http://wales.gov.uk/topics/environmentcountryside/farmingandcountryside/farmcountrypublicationindex/independent-review-of-learning/?lang=en