New Higher course for budding farming leaders

Lexi is one of the students who have signed up to the new Higher course

A secondary school in the south-west of Scotland is piloting a new Higher course aimed at encouraging the next generation of agricultural leaders.

The Young Agri Leader programme, which can be taken alongside more traditional subjects like English and Maths, has been written by two teachers at Wallace Hall Academy in Thornhill.

The Higher is the first of its kind and is designed to complement the "rural skills" course, which is already available to study at National Five level.

Teacher Neil Miller said: "We've run the rural skills course for a number of years and it's well established in the school, but pupils have always looked for opportunities to take their rural education further."

"We've wracked our brains and designed a course to try and meet that need," he added.

The Higher students will take part in a "meatbox challenge"

The course involves both hands-on workshops in an agricultural setting, as well as classroom-based learning.

There are four main units of study, with topics including rural affairs, communications and business planning.

Pupils enrolled in the Higher class will be required to look at all aspects of operating a rural business.

One of the projects, named the "meatbox challenge", will ask the class to purchase a lamb at market and then work with a local butcher to determine what cuts to use and sell.

The pupils will be in charge of everything from negotiating a price, advertising the meat and producing invoices and accounting information.

The opportunity to take the new Higher course convinced Reece to stay at school

Reece, an S5 pupil at Wallace Hall, previously studied the "rural skills" National Five course, and felt this was the next logical step for his education.

He admitted it even helped him decide to remain in higher education for another year.

"It's much better than taking a science for a lot of people," he said.

"It's a lot of people's passion and it's certainly one of mine.

"I was really happy that I could continue a course like the agricultural one I've studied previously and, yes, this has definitely helped me stay at school because it's really fun."

Pupils learn how to dose sheep as part of the Young Agri course

For others on the course, it's a chance to gain skills in an industry they'd like to work in, like Lexi, who wants to train as a veterinary nurse.

"It gives me a lot more knowledge so that I can go off and do veterinary nursing when I leave school, because I'm not that good in sciences," she said.

"This is more kind of hands-on experience with people and animals, and then you have the leadership part as well."

Local farmer and teacher Aileen Marchant wrote the course alongside colleague Neil Miller

Aileen Marchant is a local farmer, as well as a teacher at the academy, and wrote the course alongside Mr Miller.

She hopes that if the pilot course is a success, then it's something that could be rolled out to other secondary schools across Scotland.

She said: "Neil and I are more than happy to share the course because it's about the pupils at the end of the day, which then has a positive impact on our industry.

"We're having many more youngsters realising there's so much opportunity within agriculture, it's not just on the farm, so in turn it benefits everybody.

"It would be good to see more schools taking on courses like this."