An evaluation of secondary agricultural education subject offerings and enrolments in Australia

Over recent decades in Australia, secondary and tertiary institution enrolments and completions in agriculture-related courses have been inadequate for the employment demand that exists. This demand, inter alia, includes the well-publicised global issues of climate change, food security and the need to feed a significantly larger population. This paper presents a study of the current secondary agricultural education system across states and territories in Australia and evaluates its performance as it endeavours to meet the workforce needs of the nation’s agricultural industries. The data reveal a plateau in university agriculture graduate numbers, although variable between states. The need to increase intakes to expand graduate numbers represents a challenge because of the decline in numbers of secondary school agriculture course participants, an important component of the pipeline. The variability in offerings across states and territories in secondary agricultural education appears to be a blockage in the system such that students in some states, and regions within states, have little opportunity to follow that line of study. Increasing supply of students into university courses in agriculture is the major challenge in addressing the workforce shortfall. There needs to be improvements in secondary student exposure to agriculture and the buoyant employment opportunities both on-farm and off-farm, including in the cities. An increase in agricultural literacy of school student advisers, i.e. parents and teachers, would seem to be an important endeavour.