Farm Education

Following on from last week's blog on care farming and home schooling, I am staying with the educational theme this week and looking at 'Farm Education'. This is not to be confused with 'Farmer Education', which trains students for a future career in farming. 

Farm Education is the practice of enabling children to spend some time on a working farm as part of a school visit. Such visits encourage and nurture an appreciation of the countryside and aims to give an authentic learning experience in a working environment.

These visits, tailored for children of all ages might range from perhaps a hour or so, up to a full week away, possibly residential,  at a farm, such as those run by the Farms for City Children organisation.  A typical visit might include learning about food, healthy eating, farming and nature as well as teaching National Curriculum subjects in a meaningful way through tasks on the farm. These visits can also foster the development of children's social skills as well as building self confidence and self esteem. For children from cities who may not normally have the opportunity to visit the countryside, these visits can broaden horizons and build social capital by adding to their world experiences.

Farm Education is different from care farming because clients or students on a care farm don't follow a traditional school curriculum but instead they focus on time outdoors, social interactions and purposeful work. 

In next week's blog I will look specifically at the topic of School Farms.

Care Farming and the potential opportunities for Flexi and Home Schooling

Home schooling may not have been a common topic of conversation for most people before March 2020 and the Covid Lockdown. Now its receiving almost daily discussion in the UK media as various different experts dissect the pros and cons of the school closures. 

Home schooling has proved challenging for some parents - poor and unreliable internet connections, limited IT facilities, time pressures with work, or just not being sure what to 'teach'. For other parents the enforced closure of schools has given them an opportunity to try something new, have a greater say in their child's learning and a chance to try creative approaches to learning. Some families may even decide to consider home education as a long term option.

Prior to the pandemic an estimated 70,000 children and young people were home schooled each year in the UK. I had always thought of home schooling as following one main approach but adapted by each family and I was surprised to find that a combination of up to five main home education approaches are often used. These are: Traditional Home Schooling (children being taught at home by their parents), Professional Home Schooling (where you pay a number of professionals to deliver specific lessons), Flexi Schooling (which offers a mix of time in school and time at home or in another setting), Unschooling (which allows the child to learn independently, following their interests) and World Schooling (which allows families to learn about countries and cultures first hand as they travel for prolonged periods of time).

My first experience of care farming was through the flexi schooling model, although at the time I didn't realise this would have been classed as a home schooling approach. I was Head of Special Educational Needs at a large school just outside London. One young person was at risk of exclusion from school, and after a number of meetings with the student and family to consider options and potential next steps, he started chatting and sharing his aspirations and interests. It became clear that he was hoping for a career in farming so we considered how this could be facilitated in return for a commitment to, at the very least, continue English and Maths studies. We found a local care farm and devised a weekly programme that included English and Maths lessons in school and the rest of the week on the farm gaining practical skills. This approach turned a disillusioned student into one who became engaged, acquired skills for life and took personal responsibility for his own learning and path to college. 

I began to wonder if care farming could be included as part of a flexible schooling approach that might suit the learning needs of some families, children and young people.

This the idea served to shape my Churchill Fellowship application and ultimately, my wider research into green care. This led me to consider another question - could care farms and gardens support other home schooling approaches?

During my Open Wing Research in autumn 2020 I heard from a number of green care gardens and farms who reported that they had supported home schooled children and their accompanying parents by offering a series of weekly learning sessions. These sessions offered growing and animal husbandry activities as well as a chance to learn more about the environment, nature and food. 

While these examples of collaborative involvement in home schooling may not be common across care farms and gardens at present, such approaches could prove to be really valuable as they offer children and young people fresh and innovative learning opportunities.  For the care farms and gardens involved, they represent an opportunity to extend their current programmes to include categories of clients that perhaps they had not considered previously.