Farming for Schools
At Netherfield, we believe that some of our most memorable learning happens outside of traditional classroom walls. Through our Farming for Schools programme, children experience active learning in the great outdoors — connecting with nature, caring for animals, learning about seasonality and understanding where our food comes from.
All children within the school are able to visit the farm twice during their farming for schools sessions. On weeks that children are not at the farm, they put their learning into practise growing vegetables and fruits within our school growing garden.
Real farming. Real learning. Unforgettable school experiences.
Twinning Farms and Schools Network for East Sussex farms and schools
We are very lucky to be partnering with the Wealden Food Partnership and Rette Farm, a local family-run farm who are part of our school community and are situated just down the road from our school.
'Wealden Food Partnership is working with partners across East Sussex to deliver a Twinning Farms and Schools Network to match local farms with schools. The project supports the development of a unique relationship between a school a farm within a geographical area.
The project is building long-term sustainable relationships between schools and farms to help children understand more about what their local farms do, how land is looked after, where food comes from, what produce is available in their local area, promoting the wellbeing element of being outside and doing physical activity and providing access to good quality produce. It also opens doors to farms providing produce to their local schools including exploring alternative options for school meals. The project idea came from local farmers as part of Wealden Food Partnership’s conversations with the farming community about what they would like to see the Food Partnership deliver. We want schools to feel ownership of their local farm, get to know their local farmer, learn about working on a farm and possible careers and work experience opportunities they may not have considered.
The pilot project currently involves 13 farms, 11 primary schools and 2 secondary schools and is supported and resourced by the East Sussex Food Partnerships, with monitoring and evaluation provided by the University of Sussex. The aim of the pilot is to support the twinned farms/schools to run for a year through each season, and to monitor and evaluate progress, hold knowledge exchange events to highlight the twinned relationships and produce a report and case studies to champion the project and support the development of a long-term funding bid to roll the programme out.'
