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Sept 2023

Last Updated: 22/09/2023

Education

Harrogate school to create city farm

by John Grainger

| 22 Sept, 2023

Sukhraj Gill, headteacher of Harrogate High School, and Jenn Plews OBE, chief executive of Northern Star Academies Trust.

Leaders at Harrogate High School aim to create an urban farm in the school’s grounds, it has been revealed.

Harrogate High is part of the Northern Star Academies Trust, which also includes Skipton Girls’ High School and seven primaries, including New Park, Hookstone Chase, Willow Tree and Starbeck.

Jenn Plews, chief executive of Northern Star, told the Stray Ferret the trust was “really ambitious” for the school’s Ainsty Road site.

She said:

“We have an ambition to open a city farm here, probably within the next three years.

"As part of our environmental and sustainability priority, all of our schools are really focused on the farm-to-fork agenda, the walk-to school agenda, and also bringing nature in, so a lot of our schools have got a lot of plants and nature brought in from outside.

“We’ve had a farm-twinning project with AONB Nidderdale [Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty] over the last year, and last year we had over 1,000 children going out to farms as part of their education, which has been incredible.”

What form the farm would take, and what it would include, have yet to be decided. Ms Plews said:

“We’d have to work out what animals we’d have, to start with. We’ve already got goats and chickens at New Park, and ducks, and we’ve got two apiaries in the trust that produce honey.

“What this school needs is a really great partner, because we can’t do it on our own.”

She said the ideal partner would be a care farm. Care farms use farm-related activities for therapeutic purposes and provide healthcare, social care and specialist educational services.

She added:

“A farm would also allow us to give our students opportunities in animal care and husbandry qualifications.”

Harrogate High headteacher Sukhraj Gill added:

“If children are having mental health needs and wellbeing needs, the farm would be a different environment that they can get involved in. All the research shows that extracurricular things like that will help.”

Mr Gill gave the Stray Ferret a wider-ranging interview, which will be published over the weekend.

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