This is the text of the letter delivered to Parliament by the Students of Hurlstone - with all of their signatures attached (yes, all).

Don’t flog off the farm

We refer to your commitment to flogging off Hurlstone Agricultural High School’s working educational farm and your interesting use of the expression 'agriculture education in a modern setting' in recent correspondence.

It begs the question whether you believe that land and farms are superfluous to modern agriculture. A modern agriculture education doesn’t mean no cows, no sheep, no crops, as convenient as that might seem to the Education Department. You don’t make agriculture or agriculture education a modern setting by taking away the land, the livestock or the crops. Take those away and it’s neither modern nor agriculture.

Does your department understand that meat doesn’t come from Woolworths, wool doesn’t come from Lincraft and milk doesn’t come from cartons? Do they understand that more meat, better wool, sustainable cropping, better dairy practice and land management will be harder in the future – not easier? Students from Hurlstone do.

Good farming practice and agricultural science is a practical pursuit and even in modern times you can’t take hands-on land management, animal husbandry and horticultural science out of agriculture or best-practice agriculture education.

A modern setting means better investment in the land, not flogging the land to developers. We are concerned that you or your department believe that land is optional to practical agriculture education, perhaps in the mistaken belief that modern agriculture is a theoretical pursuit.

Hurlstone is not merely a selective school, it is a 100-year-old day and boarding selective, agricultural school. It is a success story, not a failure.

If you are serious about modern education, we urge you to look beyond books alone. Sustainable agriculture education needs resources like Hurlstone and its farm now, more than ever, as Australia confronts the hard truths of global food shortages, scarce land and water resources and climate change.

We urge you to reconsider this short-sighted decision to flog off the farm as if land is superfluous to modern agricultural education.

The students of
Hurlstone Agricultural High School