Gardening is set to be taught primary and secondary schools as part of the National Curriculum from September 2014, according to news reports.
Gardening to be part of National Curriculum
For many years now campaigns have been running to get children into gardening and growing their own food – over 4,000 schools in the UK are involved in the Food for Life Partnership. And now it seems as though it’s going to be an official part of their education.
One of the many organisations involved in the campaign is Garden Organic, a charity based in Coventry. The chief executive, Myles Bremner, has been quoted as saying: “We are absolutely delighted to see horticulture playing a key part in the design and technology curriculum. This will give pupils an opportunity to grow their own fruit and vegetables, which is a vital part of their wider food education and brings so many other benefits in terms of health, wellbeing and pro-environmental behaviours.”
The charity also lead the Food Growing in Schools Taskforce, which published a report showing how “food growing in schools can help pupils to achieve, build life and employability skills, and improve their health and wellbeing.”
Gardening has many benefits and teaching horticulture in school aims to improve health and well-being and pupils will gain skills and knowledge through growing their own food. Among many other things, they’ll have a better understanding and appreciation of the environment and learn to work together as part of a community.
The hope is that more work will be done to promote careers in horticulture. We recently published blog posts on gardeners being the happiest workers in the UK. However, research carried out by the RHS showed that most school leavers are not being encouraged to go for jobs in horticulture, even though it offers such a wide range of career choices.
(Quotes from: Garden Organic)
Rebecca works in the Marketing department as part of the busy web team, focusing on updating the UK news and blog pages and Thompson & Morgan’s international website. Rebecca enjoys gardening and learning about flowers and growing vegetables with her young daughter.
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