Use farming to build links between urban and rural schools, urges UUP's Carmichael

Mr Robert Carmichael, the East Londonderry Ulster Unionist Party association chairman, has called on Stormont Executive Ministers to work together using farming as an educational tool to build closer links between rural and urban schools. 

   Mr Carmichael, in a major policy statement from the UUP association, said with the new school year starting and MLAs returning from their summer recess, “now is the time to use agriculture as an educational building block between our rural and urban communities using schools and colleges as the link”. 

   Mr Carmichael added: “Such a rural/urban co-operation would be very educationally beneficial for all our students as well as emphasising the importance of agriculture to our entire society. 

   “Such a strategy could involve visits to farms to see them in action as well as links between schools based in towns and cities with schools based in the countryside. This strategy would also involve all educational school sectors - primary, secondary and further education. 

   “However, for such an educational strategy to become a reality will require the Stormont farming minister to work in close conjunction with his Executive colleagues and there is a major problem in that the farming minister does not have the support or confidence from the agricultural community.

   “With a matter of months until the end of this current Assembly’s mandate, the present farming minister has a mountain to climb to restore confidence between the agricultural community and the minister’s department. 

   “Whilst we recognise that the UUP association’s rural/urban school partnership is a progressive and constructive strategy of building the bond between the agricultural community and education, given the lack of confidence in the current farming minister, we may have to wait until the new Stormont mandate in 2027 before this bonding becomes a positive reality in our various schools,” said Mr Carmichael.