Farm to School Across the Pond: Lessons From England

Join Rick and Michelle as they (virtually) journey across the Atlantic to chat with Jennie Devine from England’s National Farmers Union. Discover how UK schools are connecting kids with farming through innovative STEM-based lessons, live farm broadcasts, and a nationwide ambassador program—without government funding! It’s a fresh take on farm to school that’s inspiring students, empowering teachers, and putting a new face on farm to school.

Transcript

Transcript

00:00:05 Michelle

Welcome to the Farm to School podcast, where you will hear stories of how you thrive and farmers prosper when we learn how to grow, cook, and eat delicious, nutritious local foods and schools across the country.

00:00:16 Rick

And the world, Hi everybody, we’re your hosts, I'm Rick.

00:00:19 Michelle

And I'm Michelle. And literally today we have a “farm to schooler” from across the world. We're so excited.

00:00:26 Rick

Yeah, we are. We have Jenny Devine. We will let her introduce herself, but she is all the way from England. Jenny. Where in England are you at?

00:00:37 Jennie Devine

Hi everybody. I am the education manager for the national Farmer’s Union in in England and I'm based in right in the very middle, in Coventry.

00:00:47 Rick

Coventry, OK? Yeah.

00:00:47 Michelle

Wow. Thank you, Jenny, for joining us from so far away.

00:00:52 Rick

Tell us a little bit about Coventry. Paint us a picture of it. Is that kind of rural, How far away is it from London? Which is all we know about it seems like.

00:01:02 Jennie Devine

I'll try and figure it out here on Midland. We are based in Stanley, which is a really small village in the Midlands and Coventry, kind of like a city, very close to that. So that's where I'm calling from. We can get to London on the train in about an hour. You can drive it in about two. It's Coventry itself is not at all...yeah, well, it's a city. But then then the Midlands is quite rural, so that works. There is. Yeah, a lot of a lot of farms around here.

00:01:38 Rick

And just to for our viewers, who was wondering what was going on in my brain here, I actually was doing some Googling a from the school across the world that, you know, that's what I do in my spare time, like, Gee, what's from the school like in, you know, Japan, what's it like in Australia? What's it like in England and I came across your name and your website and we had an e-mail chain and we've been, we've been talking. And yeah, it's like we all know about farm to school in the United States. And but it's literally quite foreign to us, obviously like, across, across the pond in England, we were talking about not only farm to school buying local and school gardens, but then we have our National School lunch program. Now what's your lunch program like? Do you have a school lunch program in England? What's that like?

00:02:39 Jennie Devine

So we have free school meals and for all primary school children from they from year from Sorry, Age 4 to 7 stage one children will have free school lunches and then after that it's means tested. So similar to you. It's dependent on the families’ income.

00:03:04 Rick

When we were talking, we were talking about what you what you do, how do you do programming for from the school like Education and things like that. What? What is your role in in the company that you work for?

00:03:24 Jennie Devine

I work for the National Farmers Union, so we represent farms and growers across England and Wales and we are entirely funded through their membership. So we don't get any sort of external funding from government or anything. We're funded by our Members truly because they believe so strongly in the importance of educating the future generation about where their food comes from. So we would set up seven years ago to communicate directly with schools and teachers. I have a teaching background in my I work in a team of three. Me and my colleagues do as well, and we are our audiences communicating directly with … children, school age children. But, through their teachers, so designing educational opportunities for teachers to deliver in the classroom in order to reach the children that way.

00:04:28 Rick

And you were telling me too that you're you reach all across England, not only England but Scotland, Wales and you even have a partnership with people in Canada, is that right?

00:04:39 Jennie Devine

Yes, we do. Yeah. So obviously our primary audience is in Wales because we that's where our membership is, but a lot of our live lessons are watched across the world. We can see where the where the watchers are and we have, we have viewers all over the place just like sort of like you just like come across our work online. And then joined in with the live lessons they the other, which was far greater than that.

00:05:06 Michelle

Jennie, you mentioned the focus being the teachers. Can you describe a little more like how do you engage the teachers? How do you recruit them? What do you actually do with them?

00:05:19 Jennie Devine

So here we're really focused on.. So we have a national curriculum that schools have to follow and then so they, so the curriculum is really full and you can just like extremely overworked. They've got a lot that they have to fit in like statutory content that they have to fit in into their weeks and food and farming doesn't feature on that very strongly at all. A very, very small amount of content on it. And so it often just gets pushed down and forgotten about because it's not expanding upon and it's not given very high importance on the national curriculum. We are trying to change this but that's the current situation is that it's not… So in order to reach those teaching members that we reach, the way that we've done that is by linking everything, all of the messaging that we want to deliver all of the activities that we do on linked really tightly to the STEM subjects of the science, technology, engineering and math. That's on the national curriculum. We link it in really tightly. Those objectives that the teachers have to deliver anyway, and I deliver it in. So I do that by designing engaging, engaging activities for children to do. It's useful for teachers because they're kicking off their scrum objectives that they have to teach anyway, and saving them time and workplace. And then it's also delivering the messaging about food and farming that the membership and that that we want them to know about. So it's kind of a kind of triple-win for everybody. That's how you get and that's how we've been successful is by linking it that way. Because it's all well and good kind of creating, like manually farming resources, but if they're not linked to the national curriculum, teachers won't pick them up and use them because they're just, they're far too busy trying to deliver the stuff, they’ve got to teach.

00:07:09 Michelle

When you say providing the resources. What kind of suite of materials do you have or kits or what? What are you providing teachers?

00:07:24 Jennie Devine

So it's not kits.  Because the way that we've the way that we've done, it's try and have the as much reach as possible if we do so we have a program called farming “STEMterprise” and that sits on the website. You can download it and then they can deliver it in their classrooms. It's a multi step STEM interdisciplinary STEM projects that's differentiated for each of the primary school year groups, so in theory they could be doing one each year as they go through primary school. It's really tightly linked to the national curriculum and it basically takes the children through as a product development cycle they grow their own food.  They learn about all the science involved in that. Then they develop a product using those using the food that they've grown. Then they do all the math around that. They work out profit and then they actually make their products and do all the kind of marketing element of that as well, but it's all a really nice, sort of like cohesive cross curricular project for children to do. So that's been that's free to download. And that's been really, really well received by teachers. But then the big thing that's had the really, really big reach is since lockdowns, we started doing live lessons. So there again, these are we live stream them out through our website and the idea was giving children access to people, places, role models, careers concept that they wouldn't usually be able to encounter in the classroom. So for example, I've just delivered a series called Science Farm Live. We link that always to this is science week. There is a week that's celebrated in primary schools across the country, so it's a really good opportunity to kind of get into primary school classroom teaching, something that they need. They need to do to prepare for science week. We'll give them an idea of what they could do, and I just did a series called the older children. It was called amazing adaptations day. We can see the same move on the theme that the which sites week organizers decided to this year was changing adaptation. So I think the series to that… So we did amazing adaptation day for younger children and they I took them. They met 14 different role models ranging from various different farmers and growers across the country. But we also met food scientists that are planted really just we went and we compare and contrast two different groups of cattle. And that's some delta gallery houses there with cows that also went to a college, an agricultural college and met the keepers and looked after with injuries and was only 17, so that was kind of a really nice selling point. So I try and basically make it as exciting and tasty as possible so they're not kind of just passively kind of watching telly, they're kind of interacting with us as well. So I can ask them questions and then we use an online tool so they can... The children can put their answers going to be. They can put their answers back in and then we can see them and comment on them. And obviously there's hundreds of thousands of children watching at the same time. So you can't comment individually, but it's quite nice to give that level of interactivity. So that's been that's been the things giving us the most success. We had 437,000 people join that series that in one week last month.

00:10:51 Michelle

That’s amazing

00:10:53 Jennie Devine

I know it was. It was crazy crazy.

00:10:57 Rick

You must be doing something right, because I was looking at doing my research in your science farm live, it said at the time. It's probably even up increased, but it says 1.5 million kid viewers.

00:11:09 Jennie Devine

Yeah, it was. That was that was in total from when we started in lockdown. But then this year, the previous the previous record of the number of children we've had in the single series was 275. And since we've got 437,000, was totally unexpected. But I did put a lot of effort into like driving all over the country to film exciting people and things.

00:11:33 Rick

Sure.

00:11:36 Michelle

That's amazing. And to do this, you mentioned your organization, but do you work in network or partnerships with other organizations or governments?

00:11:46 Jennie Devine

We will collab sometimes with friends, with different organizations on projects that know this science farm live is are entirely in a few projects. It's just it's me and my team and we're really lucky because the memberships are so supportive. So and we've got this really brilliant network of Ambassadors, because we have another program where we actually send farmers into schools to speak to children and deliver assemblies. And we have a network of 350 ambassadors and we'll come and do the training with us. To do that, and they give up their time to do it. And basically what I need is we need to film something that's exciting and I've got an idea for kind of a storyline where I want to go and like film The blueberry harvest or film The Belted Galloway or film something we have such a great network of farmers that are just sort of that are always willing to help us or introduce us to someone who will help us. Yeah. Find their content that we need.

00:12:43 Jennie Devine

So that's not for me to kind of… Yeah, 

00:12:46 Michelle

And so. This is so this is so inspiring and so you mentioned you have the whole network of ambassadors. You train the ambassadors then, in education?

00:13:00 Jennie Devine

But yeah, we have these 350 ambassadors. We basically bring them in and come to a training day. We do training days at two different points across the year. So we've got the next one coming up next month. So we'll be doing 4 different points around England and Wales. They come for the whole day and we basically spend all day talking to them about how what you know, what makes a good presentation, how to engage young people. We only want them to do a presentation that's like 20 minutes. But even a 20 minute presentation to, you know, 300 secondary school children is very daunting for anybody. We give them an opportunity to really grasp their sort of start 20 minute presentation. So it's we've gone through with them and we've put it together in a sort of standardized format but then help them to put it together. So it's engaging but also delivering sort of the messages that they want to get across. And so we work with them on that all day. They get a chance to workshop it to kind of practice delivering it, pull it apart a little bit with their peers and then they kind of always send them in in pairs to deliver those assemblies up first. So we've kind of got, they've got more support of having like a buddy with them.

00:14:18 Michelle

This is so innovative and impactful. Did you when you're developing this, did you look to other models? What was your inspiration for creating this?

00:14:30 Jennie Devine

You can't remember it since it was it was. It was actually getting members telling us about how other organizations have been going in and delivering assembly, so sometimes schools will accept like an assembly from a leading organization, for example, and they won't necessarily be fact checking it. Or basically in basing it on of our food system. So we wanted to have an opportunity to get in front of the young people, often members and for the young people to tell that own story, and also a big aim of that project as well as to put a face to farming. So it's not the stereotype of, you know, old McDonald's, an old white man, he's got one chicken, one cow, and then she we wanted to put real farming into school so that they could engage with them. As, you know, real people and give them a chance to tell their story.

00:15:32 Rick

Just to shift a little bit, let's talk challenges. I know we you and I had a discussion before and we're very fortunate in the states at times we've had funding through the federal level or the state level in terms of grants for funds. Still it's starting to be a big thing. How do you get things funded there in England?

00:16:00 Jennie Devine

Yeah. As far so from our perspective, we get absolutely no government funding tools for our projects. It isn't government funding for this kind of work. So we are in the room which position because our membership in the project, so they fund it, our Members believe in the projects that we're doing so much so they that ones are funding it because they believe that the work is important and I think the government should be funding it. Yeah, currently they're not. We're trying to change this.

00:16:31 Michelle

Yeah. Can we talk about that a little more too with very similar situation in teachers, and even school Counselors and others in the school environment have so many different things to be doing any given time.  Yeah, you know, being literate in agriculture, food and the environment hasn't been a priority. So very similarly to like the creative aspects of turning education, agricultural education or school garden education into tying it to STEM and spinning approach as well, and I'm just curious what your policy approaches have been maybe of you or just what's happening in England?  And the next lunch program and then the other part of farm to school being the school garden aspect, like on school site or community garden handling experiences, students have. What's happening in that realm?

00:21:00 Jennie Devine

Again, that's down to the there's no requirement for anything like that to be provided for in school, so because of the lack of importance given to only primary curriculum, it just tends to not happen unless there's a specific very keen member of staff and really sort of push it through and kind of be the lead on it. It's particularly when I was when I was a teacher, it was it's like we had we had such we had amazing grounds we had to cut through the pond, but because we weren't so much pressure to deliver the curriculum and deliver the sort of the externally assessed subjects, the children in the school very rarely got an opportunity to use any of these facilities and just because of the amount of time available in the in the curriculum, in the timetable.

00:21:54 Michelle

Jennie, you and your organization have already had so much impact and innovation and I'm just curious what are you thinking about for the future?

00:22:02 Jennie Devine

So we've just launched a really exciting new project that I am particularly passionate about. So the agricultural sector is the least diverse, racially and ethnically diverse sector in the UK, and this could this really kind of randomly that we are the worst in the whole of the UK. So we've designed a program and where to sort of try to take a long term view to start addressing that and to bring about meaningful change in this in this space and bring more diversity and inclusion into our sector. The idea is we are recruiting and it's a scholarship program and agriculture Scottish scholarship program. It will run for five years and the idea is that we'll be releasing 24 young people who are in year 9, so they're age 14 at the moment. There will be anyone selected from scholarship that and they should be that initially they'll be coming away with us for a residential experience in August this year that will be... We're hosting it on with an outward bound charity. So in addition to getting lots of hand on Farm experience balance, so be doing lots of up and down sort of team building, doing building activities as well. And then we're also gonna be bringing lots of role models for 55 chats, lots of opportunities to do workshops and things that we'll be implementing them into our the residential week. But then obviously we don't when we just do one week from repeating those actually experiences every year with the same cohort of young people as they move through their secondary school sort of career. So by the time they get to 18 and they're making the decision about where they're going to go and what sort of career they wanted to see, they would have those..  get those annual residential experiences, but then in between we're creating bespoke mentoring in program. So they're going to be patient from a similar background to themselves, and they'll be giving opportunities to attend events and networking and have work experience, opportunities and doing open schools and basically within the sector, so that by the time these young people reaching they would be would have been built. So they've had reviews of brilliant career related experiences of the sector. So that hopefully they can choose to do any sector. But we're hoping that rather coming like throws at that point, some of our young people will. So that's our kind of new exciting program launching that have just launched.

00:24:47 Michelle

That's incredibly exciting. You had mentioned focus on career development and those that is very tangible and I imagine in to such an informative time in life, we really look forward to seeing how that unfolds.

00:25:02 Jennie Devine

So yeah, the research shows that you kind of if you want young people to still consider your industry, you need to start as early as possible with the create education. So I build career education into all of our great grounds, but this is a really sort of targeted program for these 24 young people.

00:25:21 Michelle

I'm curious too. One of the areas of increased attention has been around social, emotional learning and mental health connections related to food, agriculture and garden-based education. What is the conversation like in your area?

00:25:38 Jennie Devine

There is some really good.. we don't really get involved in that to say that there's some brilliant charities in the UK that's sort of the care farming element really, really well. But again, there's no it's not government funded. Daily the charities or their organizations that seek something elsewhere. But there is excellent work going on with that I've seen. I went into a brilliant example of a farm that they take young people in small groups and then they do like a whole week of work with them and farm and it's just going to be the impact in just the one week is so incredibly you can have all these young children.

00:26:19 Michelle

Jenny, thank you so much for sharing all your inspiration and also specific ways that you are thinking about for the future. And we would also like to thank everyone for listening today.

00:26:30 Rick

And thank you everybody from the school was written, directed and produced by Rick Sherman and Michelle Markesteyn, and was made possible by a grant from the United States Department of Agriculture.

00:26:41 Michelle

Content and ideas on farm school podcasts do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Oregon State University, Oregon Department of Education, and the United States Department of Agriculture. The USDA, Oregon Department of Art and Oregon State University are equal opportunity providers and planners.

00:26:57 Rick

Do you want to learn more about Farm to school? Check out other episodes, show notes, contact information and much more by Googling Farm to school podcast, OSU.

00:27:07 Michelle

Yes, we'd love to hear from you. Please stop by and give us ideas for future podcasts. And Jennie, thank you again.

00:27:14 Rick

Thank you, Jennie.

00:27:16 Jennie Devine

Thank you very much.

00:27:18 Rick

Bye everyone.

00:27:28 Rick

And special thanks to Leanne Locker of Oregon State University for production support. Thanks Leanne.