In early August, a team of four Stratford High School students Danyon Hicks, Regan Mitchell, Cody Ussher and Hannah Slater participated in the annual ACC Taranaki Agricultural Challenge against six other secondary schools.
The competition is held annually and is hosted by Francis Douglas Memorial College. Students can only participate for one year and must be at least 16.
Stratford High School has participated in this competition for the last 12 years and has often done well considering the level of competition.
Modules completed during the competition were ATV handling, tractors, chemical handling, first aid, stock handling, hearing safety, handling rural fire equipment and a quick-fire quiz.
Dayon says, "We didn't expect to win. It was a real surprise!"
The team received gift bags stocked with a range of exciting things such as Farmlands vouchers and safety clothing as prizes.
As an incentive, Hamish Tough, agricultural teacher at Stratford High School, created a wager with his students involving some McDonald's vouchers for a top three placement. The incentive must have done the trick as the students worked as hard as they could with fantastic results. Stratford High School came out on top with a consistently high mark of over 80 percent in each module.
Regan says, "It was a really fun competition. I would highly recommend agricultural students to participate."