“Well, how the exams go?”

“Yeah, grand, grand. Not too bad considering!”

We were back to Ballyhaise agriculture college last Friday for the fourth day of practicals in the Teagasc distance learning programme, aka, the Green Cert.

Thoughts turned to exam results when we landed. The results from our written exams the previous day were on the notice board.

“The writing’s on the wall here lads,” exclaimed one fellow student.

Natter about how brilliantly we all did despite none of us having even opened a book or studied whatsoever consumed the majority of the morning.

After that it was it was on to weighing of cattle; not my strongest field.

“What do you reckon the weight on this Simmental cow is,” our tutor asked. I threw down 700kg on the answer sheet.

“780kg.”

One of the lads from Monaghan got to within 2kg twice on six of the animals on display, it was an incredible piece of skill.

Then it was dosing cattle, body scoring dairy cows and mixing of milk replacer.

There are those who gladly sneer at the Green Cert. Yes, the content is not particularly strenuous or difficult but there is a considerable workload to get through and does give people with no farm experience at least a grounding in some of the basic skills.

Outside of the 12 or so Fridays this year which concentrates solely on the practical work, there is a back-breaking volume of books to wade through for each set of exams. We never cover any of the content from the books while in college. It is up to each student to study those between exams.

However, is the national syllabus still fit for purpose for modern day agriculture? That remains to be seen and is a question for another day.

We’re back in a month’s time.

Yours in education...