TATC - News Item

Top students are female for both Taranaki and Wairarapa

campuses!

28 February 2011

Melanie Nixon (18) received the award for Top Student at Taratahi’s Taranaki graduation last week. Her achievement comes a month after Cologne McKinstry, of King Country achieved the same honour at Taratahi’s Wairarapa graduation.

Taratahi has five campuses spread throughout the North Island and CEO Donovan Wearing says the females’ success is a sign of the times, with more young women enrolling to do agricultural training every year.

Mr Wearing says that agriculture is also attracting more town people and half of the students enrolling with Taratahi have little or no farming background.

Melanie Nixon grew up in Auckland and says she found the fulltime course “really great because there was a whole group of us learning new skills at the same time, so we were all in the same boat.”

“The tutors are really interested in where we get to with farming and that really helps,” she says.

Mr Wearing agrees the Taratahi tutors are “passionate about agriculture”.

The Taranaki Graduation was held at Taratahi’s Stratford campus where a number of students successfully achieved their Certificate in General Farm Skills (Level 2), National Certificate in Farming Skills (Work Ready) (Level 3), or their National Certificate in Agriculture (Level 4).

This year Taratahi is anticipating a greater number of student enrolments after signing a partnership agreement with WITT for agricultural training in Taranaki.

In order to provide for these numbers Taratahi is opening a new campus and this week will see the start of North Taranaki students training at the Faull family’s “Supershed” dairy farm at Tikorangi..

Mr Wearing says “It’s a win-win for everyone.”

“Taranaki students will be enrolled with WITT and will still get the benefit of having a training provider with more than 90 years of agricultural training expertise.”

In addition to achieving their qualifications, the Taratahi students were in the running for some top awards. These were presented as follows:

Muir Family Stockmanship Award – Lisa Earley

Reardon Family Shearing Trophy – Myles Cartwright

Gaudin Family Fencing Trophy – Craig Macken

Taratahi Farm Machinery Trophy – Leif Zimmerman

Stratford Demonstration Farm Committee Most Improved Student – Craig Macken

Williams & Kettle Work Experience Trophy – Richard Alty

Taratahi Taranaki Tutor Trophy – Hayden Mullan

Coplestone Family Leadership Trophy – Charlotte Jones

Taratahi Taranaki Top Student Award – Melanie Nixon