David Drew
Main Page: David Drew (Labour (Co-op) - Stroud)Department Debates - View all David Drew's debates with the Department for Education
(6 years, 6 months ago)
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My hon. Friend makes a valid point. It is important to ensure that all education facilities have the opportunity to offer a GCSE in agriculture. It should be available to all—that is the premise of the argument—and not a limited few.
Again, I entirely agree. I will go on to mention that this is not just about agriculture. The wider rural economy, the environment and food security link back to agriculture and food production.
I understand that the Department for Education has recently introduced changes to secondary qualifications and wants a time to allow those to settle down, but a model exists for how to design and teach the subject at GCSE level, which suggests it would be straightforward for the Government to make it available. Has there been any consideration of replicating the content of the GCSE syllabus available to those in Northern Ireland for students in Britain?
I have been sympathetic to an expansion in GCSE options for some time, but I was encouraged to argue for this more publicly by the intervention of the BBC “Countryfile” presenter, Adam Henson, who publicly called for the introduction of an agriculture GCSE in September last year. He said:
“You can get a GCSE in religious studies and business, so why not in agriculture?”
That is a fair question. A GCSE in agriculture has a strong claim to feature among current non-core science and mathematics options, which currently include geology, astronomy and psychology. Expanding the offer to include the option of a GCSE in agriculture would be a sensible and logical development of the Government’s welcome plans to expand the provision of vocational and technical education in order to create a better skilled and more productive workforce, enjoying higher wages and better living standards. That is recognised in the Government’s industrial strategy, which made the claim of
“putting the UK at the forefront of this global revolution in farming.”