Completed July 2021
Located in the South East region of Tasmania, Sorell School is the oldest continually operating school in Australia, catering for Kindergarten to Year 6 and Year 7 to 10 with a training centre catering for Years 11 – 12 which deliver a number of training programs.
Sorell School, which has over 850 students from Kindergarten to Year 12, where 12 per cent of the students have an Indigenous background and 2 per cent have a language background other than English.
This project was initiated through a partnership between Food Ladder and Hands On Learning (HOL), who identified Sorell School as a perfect fit for a Food Ladder school greenhouse system. With volunteers and great student engagement the Sorell School project began on the 28th June 2021 and was completed a month later, as the seedlings germinated! Sorell School will be using produce from the greenhouse to supplement produce from their school garden for their use in the school cafeteria making healthy meals for students as well as other social enterprise activities, such as producing seedlings to sell into the community.
Progress since completion
Since the greenhouse’s completion in July 2021, Sorell School have had 4 successful harvests. The Year 10-12 and Kinder to Year 4 students have taken on the primary responsibility for the greenhouse, its maintenance, harvesting and cooking of the produce, with weekly class visits. Over two hundred students have been involved directly with the greenhouse, with the primary school sending 8 classes of 25 students each week and the college sending 10 students a week.
The greenhouse, in tandem with Sorell’s pre-existing kitchen garden program and outdoor garden, have been extremely successful in educating the students on the entire paddock to plate process. The students have focused on growing leafy greens, specifically lettuces, basil and coriander.
Each term the harvested produce is eaten by students and used in cooking classes, providing long lasting nutritional education and cementing healthy eating habits.
We look forward to another successful term ahead for Sorell School.
Food Ladder acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of the lands on which this greenhouse is built, the Palawa peoples. We celebrate the diversity of Aboriginal peoples and their ongoing cultures and connections to the lands and waters of Tasmania. We pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging and acknowledge the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people that contributed to the development of this resource.