The debate over prefabs
Article presented in the Western Leader, Thursday February 28, 2002 By AMY PATTERSON Education authorities have ruled out rushing more temporary classrooms to the aid of bulging Auckland schools this year. The Ministry of Education is dealing with an increase in student numbers across the city. Ministry network provision manager Brenda Radford says planning had already been made to provide Auckland secondary schools with an extra 60 classrooms, and intermediates an extra 20 classrooms. Like last year, half of these will be pre-fabricated, known as prefabs. "We've foreseen a fair amount of this population growth, most secondary schools have projects to deal with it," says Ms Radford. Most schools will be pleased that there will be no increase in temporary buildings, as they prefer permanent, purpose-built classrooms. Ms Radford says half of the 80 new classrooms built at Auckland schools last year were temporary. The ministry moves temporary classrooms, or prefabs, from school to school as roll growth changes. Mt Roskill Grammar School principal Ken Rapson says his school roll has jumped from 1989 students last year to 2140 this year. The school has 26 relocatable prefabs and is planning permanent classrooms for its 25 year-old unit for physically disabled students. "There are other very old classrooms on the site, they are worn out," says Mr Rapson. "I can understand the ministry's point that they want some [prefabs] because rolls do fluctuate. "This school has had steady roll growth for a long time. Iin the last five years the ministry accounted for that and provided more permanent buildings -- previous to that they didn't." He says prefabs take up more space than permanent buildings and the loss of school property is a constant issue. To build 10 new permanent science laboratories the school lost two tennis courts and a hockey field. "Every time you get roll growth, you lose green space," says Mr Rapson. The ministry tries to balance the number of transportable prefabs with permanent classrooms. The ratio is supposed to be one prefab to two permanent. Epsom Normal Primary is full and the board of trustees does not want more classrooms. Principal Marilyn Gwilliam says the children have only the fields and a small pocket of grass to play on, the rest is concrete. "We've filled up all the current classes, we don't actually want any more classrooms on the site," says Mrs Gwilliam. There are seven relocatable prefabs at the school. "We've got new ones and they are very beautiful, they are lovely rooms," says Mrs Gwilliam. "Probably the only issue with them is they take up space. A lot of schools now are saying to the ministry: 'we won't have any more space, we want two storey buildings', and they are building up." She says children need to be close to the outdoors and prefabs have windows on both sides. To accommodate more students they will teach in the hall, put half classes in resource rooms and small reading rooms. "What you do is look around your school and say 'where can I put 15 kids?'," says Mrs Gwilliam.
Permanent? or Village like? Interesting question. Driving around and observing the kind of buildings that are on school sites it is easy to see that prefabs (relocs as they are known to Ministry Property Managers) continue to be major feature of many schools. There are two sides to this story , one is the Ministry of Education's frustrating need to house bulging populations in their local schools and the other is the highly important role that an environment plays in children's learning. Which one is being compromised in this situation? And for how long do these buildings remain in-situ instead of being replaced with appropriate school facilities. I have seen too many unfortunate situations where certain classes are placed in these buildings in demeaning areas of the school. Prefabs are an add-on, if they are not designed into the big picture of how a school operates then they loose their effectiveness as appropriate learning environments. Some of the questions that need to be asked of these buildings is their ability to enhance the schools learning environment in respect to connectivity/interactivity (inclusion within the existing school), acoustic suitability, interesting aesthetic appeal, appropriate lighting (built to suit the site and take advantage of natural lighting and outlook), reducing the amount of space taken away from play/exercise areas, suitability of placement of these buildings, Unfortunately I believe there must be a better way of designing learning environments to meet the needs of expanding and contracting population situations. Should schools expand? Would it be better to consider creating another small school instead of adding to an existing one? Is this starting to happen? Are new schools being designed with this in mind and to what extent is this influencing the style and function of that school design? Is there a need to realise that there is a limit to how many children should be housed on any one site? These need to be comments by Alastair Wells
to student boom
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