£499,778 FOR PRIMARY SCHOOL BUILDINGS IN CANTERBURY

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27664, 21 May 1955, Page 10

£499,778 FOR PRIMARY SCHOOL BUILDINGS IN CANTERBURY

The Canterbury Education Board’s share of the £6.500.000 voted for education expenses this year will be £499,778. Last year the board was allotted £593.000, but spent only £389.000. Announcing this year’s allocation at a meeting of the board yesterday. Mr C. G. S. Ellis, Assistant-Director of Education, said that when the Minister of Education (Mr R. M. Algie) announced last week that the Cabinet had approved £6.500.000. he had said that details would follow. “I am the details that follow,’’ Mr Ellis said, with a smile. He was not happy about the underexpenditure on school building work last year, and*he was sure the board was not happy about it. said Mr Ellis. The building programme throughout the country had to be speeded up. and one way of ensuring this was to adopt designs which provided for a maximum of classroom space. Mr Ellis explained to board members the new school plans evolved after an overseas visit by himself and two colleagues. In America, where Mr Ellis spent five months on a Carnegie grant last year, he was impressed with the lighting of schools in California. “We’ll have to do a lot of work on our fenestration.” said Mr Ellis He also admired the Californian practice of situating special schools as close as possible to the main schools, so that special school pupils could occasionally join classes at the main schol. This was of great value to the morale of special school children. - With two colleagues. Mr Ellis studied the work of the British Education Ministry’s specialist committee on school design. As a result of their experience in Britain they had evolved a new design aimed at increasing the speed of

’s! school construction and at keeping the I-1 costs to a minimum. e' The new design for primary schools is{ increased the amount of classroom y space by 15 per cent, to 78 per cent, I lof the total building space, said Mr i it Ellis. One effect of this was to en- i r large the classrooms from 26 feet by f 24ft to 32 feet by 24 feet. In Cali- - fornia he had heard it said “you can't ) teach in a straitjacket,” and this was • t the reason for increasing the teaching i d space. e “Block” Type of School [ h .T* l6 new “block” type of school pro- | vided classroom accommodation for , i' P ost -P r imary pupils in a circle of i k 400 feet, said Mr Ellis. The older i a “institutional” type of school had one 1 ?. whole wing outside the circle and parts ! J of four other wings protruded beyond ? u j The “ bl °ck” type thus t had the important advantage of sava mg about an acre of land, which d was desirable whether the land saved 1 was producing food for the community t or rates for the local body. , . I _ T ? e chairmar ’ 'Mr S. J. Irwin) said i tha. apparently the verandas and cort ndors had disappeared. What shelter - was being provided for the children 1 on wet. boisterous and very hot days? - Mr Ellis said that the teachers’ rep1. resentatives who had been consulted -ad agreed that in such weather the o children should be allowed inside the buildings. This was the practice in s Britain: but all schools there had ast sembly halls. 1 The Mangere school, the first of the new primary schools, would be finished 3 m about a month, said Mr Ellis, in - reply to another question. He em'l phasised that the new designs were not meant to be standard designs: I v each board was perfectly free to i evolve its own variations.