A strong biosecurity system – ‘Come Clean,Go Clean’ a winning formula

Tail of Pigs – The winner of The Archibull Prize 2017 Best Biosecurity Animation was Little Bay Community of Schools

The Little Bay Community of Schools concept is the perfect example of how successful schools can be when they pool their resources and expertise. Little Bay Community of Schools brings together the five primary schools who feed into Matraville Sports High School to provide transitional relationships to secondary school and to promote Matraville Sports High School as more than just a sports school.

Principal Nerida Walker and head teacher of art Sarah Robinson has been involved with The Archibull Prize for five years, successfully taking Matraville Sports High to Grand Champion Archibull on two occasions. They saw The Archibull Prize as the perfect vehicle to work closer with their feeder schools.

In addition Sarah was instrumental in developing the UNSW Matraville Education Program– an affiliation that gives high school students exposure to additional arts and science classes, and give teachers from the university hands on experience working with students. For this Matraville was awarded our inaugural Alan Eagle Award in 2016 – presented to a school fostering partnerships between education, business and the community.”

Since 2016 Sarah has been playing a mentor role to other schools involved in The Archibull Prize and 2017 saw Little Bay of Community School take out the NSW Government Biosecurity Award for their Tail of Pigs animation

The NSW Government sees a strong biosecurity system as vital for protecting our primary industries, our economy and our community.

Agricultural production alone provides:

$12 Billion NSW Primary Industries contribution to the economy
39,000 Agricultural businesses in NSW
42,000 Farms in NSW
66,000 People employed in NSW Agriculture Industry
$8 billion value of NSW Agricultural exports

With a vision of Government, industry and the people of NSW working together to protect the economy, environment and community from the negative impacts of animal and plant pests, diseases and weeds for the benefit of all, the government is investing heavily in education programs for farmers and the community including schools.

Concepts relating Biosecurity are considered by school teachers to be complex. The Archibull Prize gives students a concrete mechanism for these very abstract ideas. Using farmers as role models and agricultural examples students are encouraged to appreciate the ways in which farmers are actively addressing biosecurity challenges in Australia and to think about applying this to themselves.

Biosecurity was an issue that 91% of students reported discussing during their Archibull Prize projects with half of those students looking at the topic in-depth

Teachers reported significant shifts in students gaining greater understandings of farmers concerns about biosecurity and the community’s role in preventing biosecurity breaches

Students were particularly inspired by the Cotton Industry ‘Come Clean Go Clean’ program and the concept of the pork industry Pig Pass.

Typical students’ comments about their role in preventing biosecurity breaches included

We need to keep our country free of disease and pests. This can only be done if every single person tries to follow the rules that are put in place to keep Australia bio secure. Students can help be bio secure by respecting the regulations and restrictions on other people’s farms and obeying the rules of our border security. We should wear clean shoes and have clean cars. Remove weeds and don’t drop them in areas where that weed isn’t already growing. Look after their own pets and keep parasites from spreading from them.

The Archibull Prize design allows agriculture to be embedded into the school curriculum across subject areas its hasn’t been traditionally able to reach.

And its had a ripple effect with 83% of teachers saying they will use learning activities about agriculture in other areas of their teaching