Principal John Burt said the school plans to open a farm on 11-hectare grounds by January next year, after last month getting approval for the project from the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development.

Mr Burt said the school had been investigating the possibility of purchasing land for a farm for some time, but began negotiations with the department about the Norman St site in October last year.

"It's a very ideal site for what we are going to use it for and we're very lucky to say it's now a Ballarat Specialist School site," Mr Burt said.

Midlands Secondary College was closed in the 1990s when the school was absorbed into Ballarat Secondary College.

Since then, the site has been subject to periodic vandalism, with most of the former classrooms now removed.

Three of the old school's buildings remain, but one of these is now leased by Victoria Police for use as a training centre. Ballarat Specialist School previously used the campus in 1999, when its main Gillies St school was being

built.

Mr Burt said a former library building will be converted to a young adult centre, while an older structure will be demolished to make way for a new facility in coming years.

The new FARM _ standing for flexibility, adaptability, responsibility and management _ will include a market garden, poddy calf rearing section and a winter lucerne crop.

Mr Burt said the school aimed to develop a cottage industry from the market garden and sell the calves to local dairy farms.

"So it's going to be very simple but it will actually be a working farm," he said.

"The idea is they can then transfer the skills they have learned here in a real way into the workforce."