Agriculture

Welcome to the Kingsmead School Agriculture Department

If you like the outdoors and don’t mind working hard whatever the weather and enjoy being busy, agriculture with horticulture could be the right choice for you!

This BTEC Level 2 qualification is designed to provide specialist work-related experience and knowledge within the sector. This will give you the knowledge, understanding and skills that you need to prepare for employment or college.

Assessment: Is achieved through a combination of practical, outdoor experience and classroom based written assignments. This provides you with the knowledge, skills and understanding needed for a career in the land-based sector, which is huge!

Equipment and Resources: All equipment and resources required to carry out practical tasks are provided however students will need to purchase some essential PPE items to use on the course. These will include overalls and steel toe-cap boots. During the winter months warm, waterproof clothing and wellington boots are essential.

Units studied: Estate Skills – safe tool use, fencing, path building, gate hanging, hedge-laying, planning and preparing work sites and health and safety legislation.

Sheep Husbandry - welfare, feed, lambing, basic treatments, routine husbandry, handling, foot trimming, shearing, using a range of tools and equipment etc. and animal welfare legislation.

Crop Establishment - ground preparation for seeding and planting, use a range of tools in order to prepare the ground for planting, stablishing seeds and plants in soil.

The Environment - conservation, damage caused by work, sustainability, disposal of waste and environmental legislation.

Agriculture Curriculum Intent:

Many Kingsmead students come from a rural background and have grown up surrounded by agricultural activity. Agriculture is a large employment sector within Somerset.
The subject is taught through theory and practical making it accessible to all learners combining kinaesthetic, audible and visual learning styles.
Learners are challenged throughout the course both academically, socially (through group work), peer mentoring, and implementation of a range of written and practical assessments. Learners talk the talk and walk the walk.
Year 11 students (year 8 N/A) will understand the importance of agriculture as an industry not only to Somerset but the world.
They will have acquired a range of skills and qualities through their experience too numerous to mention here!
Students will understand why agriculture is important to so many other allied industries and the role agriculture must lead balancing the challenges of an increasing population and sustainable practice.
BTEC qualifications prepare learners for the workplace giving them real skills and experience.

Sequence of Learning in Agriculture

This is a summary of the topics studied in Agriculture at Kingsmead School

Key Stage 4 Sequence of Learning	Year 9	Year 10	Year 11
Term 1 (Sept-Oct)	Introduction to safe working and tool use H & S Legislation Animal	Disease and Disorders of livestock Transmission and Prevention of	Report on importance of routine animal husbandry during 3^rd Trimester / lambing
Term 2 (Nov-Dec)	Estate maintenance Tools use Environmental Legislation	Stratification of UK sheep industry Regional uses of breeds and X breeds	Report on factors affecting overall productivity of farming businesses
Term 3 (Jan-Feb)	Production and reproduction of livestock Animal health checks	Identifying components of and creating flock health plans. Putting this into practise.	Report on how health and safety and environmental legislation can impact a farming business
Term 4 (Feb-Mar)	Causes of Environmental damage and minimising factors Lambing duties	Lambing basics, treatments, preparation for, report on lambing and rearing %	Presentations created and presented covering 3 trimesters and nutritional demands of ewes
Term 5 (June-July)	Estate maintenance, routine husbandry of sheep, shearing, dagging, drenching, flystrike	Routine and non- routine sheep husbandry. Sheep shearing, dagging, drenching, flystrike	Disease and Disorders control of, vaccinations, culling policy, signs and symptoms. Report and present information.
Term 6 (Apr-May)	Introduction to importance of animal husbandry, complying with current legislation	Reproduction and production cycles of ovine, pocine and bovine. Profitability of each species.	Factors impacting the environment, planning for estate work focusing on environmental and health and safety factors.

Top 5 Websites

For additional learning and revision in this subject, see these websites:

Agriculture Progress Overviews

These are designed to outline the progression of Agriculture based learning within each year group. They make clear the skills, understanding and knowledge within each category of our language for learning.