“Students were here really only doing horticulture because they often felt it was what you did if you could not do anything else, which was ridiculous, given where we are,” Hilary Johnson says. As a science teacher with 12 years’ experience at Katikati College, Johnson was offered the opportunity to set up a specialist horticultural unit. Despite not having taught the subject, she rose to the challenge.
The irony of horticulture as a subject being derided by students at Katikati College was not lost on the subject’s head teacher, Hilary Johnson, six years ago. Katikati sits firmly in the western Bay of Plenty, arguably the country’s most productive high-value horticultural region, accounting for about 80% of New Zealand’s $3 billion kiwifruit industry, avocados and assorted niche crops.
Yet in 2017 the local high school was struggling to get double-digit class numbers in the subject. While agriculture has enjoyed a solid upward trajectory in high school student numbers in the past five to seven years, its high-value cousin horticulture has often struggled. Katikati College was proving no exception.
“Students were here really only doing horticulture because they often felt it was what you did if you could not do anything else, which was ridiculous, given where we are,” she says. As a science teacher with 12 years’ experience at the school, Johnson was offered the opportunity to set up a specialist horticultural unit. Despite not having taught the subject, she rose to the challenge.
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