{"id":29621,"date":"2025-09-18T12:52:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-18T12:52:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/29621\/"},"modified":"2025-09-18T12:52:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-18T12:52:07","slug":"education-ministry-reverses-plan-to-remove-agriculture-subjects-from-schools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/29621\/","title":{"rendered":"Education Ministry reverses plan to remove agriculture subjects from schools"},"content":{"rendered":"

Allen, who is also an agribusiness teacher at St Paul\u2019s Collegiate, told RNZ that not every student wanted to do hands-on training<\/a> out on the farm, because many were interested in other parts of the sector.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s done a fabulous job,\u201d McManaway told The Country\u2019s Jamie Mackay.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe grabbed hold of it, and she\u2019s got a lot of contacts and is obviously very passionate about this particular area in education.\u201d<\/p>\n

McManaway also made a few calls.<\/p>\n

\u201cI got stuck in on the Friday afternoon and rattled a few cages,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

McManaway said he was texted by Acting Secretary for Education Ellen MacGregor-Reid, asking for a call, which he appreciated.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve spoken to her probably three or four times since the announcement went back out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even though the curriculum plan was \u201ca very bad decision in the first instance\u201d, McManaway said the outcome had led to positive changes.<\/p>\n

Listen to Jamie Mackay interview Shane McManaway on The Country below:<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know that we\u2019ve got a good voice into those places like the Ministry of Education, we\u2019ve got a lot of people doing a lot of stuff, but we\u2019re fragmented, and they were really keen to talk to us.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, I think we\u2019ve now set up a better communication platform.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said that, while his Government was replacing NCEA with a \u201cmuch stronger education programme\u201d, the ministry\u2019s handling of the agricultural changes had missed the mark.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe ministry got that wrong,\u201d he told Mackay.<\/p>\n

Listen to Jamie Mackay interview Christopher Luxon on The Country below:<\/p>\n

\u201cI think what\u2019s really impressive is within a 48-hour period, our own \u2018Rural Nats\u2019, as we call them, our National MPs, made it pretty clear they thought that was a mistake.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said feedback from the sector was a key factor in the process.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe minister then directed the ministry to revisit it, and they reversed that decision.\u201d<\/p>\n

Luxon said that\u2019s what people wanted to see in Government.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou want to see a Government that listens to the sector, responds and actually does something and takes action rather than just sort of dribbles along and lets it carry on.\u201d<\/p>\n

The National Government had four ministers in agriculture, Luxon said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhich underscores the importance of the sector to us.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Allen, who is also an agribusiness teacher at St Paul\u2019s Collegiate, told RNZ that not every student wanted…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29622,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[19330,6689,28876,1558,12974,84,71,7237,42,2862,28874,43,2170,2171,28875,17158,4062,6649,12975,16888,7563,61,40,38,41,39,1849],"class_list":["post-29621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-19330","tag-agriculture","tag-agriculturerelated","tag-been","tag-change","tag-education","tag-from","tag-governments","tag-headlines","tag-heart","tag-ministry","tag-news","tag-plan","tag-plans","tag-remove","tag-reverses","tag-school","tag-schools","tag-sector","tag-subjects","tag-those","tag-to","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-welcomed"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29621\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}