ACCOMMODATION AT SCHOOL

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28155, 19 December 1956, Page 22

ACCOMMODATION AT SCHOOL

REVISED PLAN FOR GIRLS’ HIGH APPROVAL BY BOARD A revised development plan for the Christchurch Girls’ High School was generally approved by the Board of Governors yesterday afternoon, although concern was expressed about the limited staff accommodation. Stage one of the plan will regroup some of the ground floor to provide new offices for the first assistant mistress and the careers adviser, and a comfortable sick bay handy to staff supervision. On the upper floor the origihal school hall will be converted into a proper library and workroom, and an overbridge outside will save this area being used as a connecting corridor. Two classrooms will become a large geography room with an associated equipment store, the present dressmaking room will be shortened into a classroom and store, and the cookery room, pantry, and laundry will make two classrooms, the home-life classes being transferred to the new wing, which will also contain two new laboratories. The present library-class-room will become a music room. Stage two of the plan includes a new assembly hall. “The school will then be approaching the accommodation it really needs,” the headmistress (Miss R. F. C. Tyndall) told the board. The plans were based on the reduction of the school roll to afeout 600. But even with that improvement she was concerned that staffroom accommodation was so limited. It would be fair to provide both a common room and a workroom because so much work was done at school. When the assembly hall was built, the staff room allowed would be still further reduced. Miss Tyndall said she did not think the Education Department could compare the Christchurch Girls’ High School with the Southland Girls’ High School. The latter was a new school and, • although it might be similar in size to the roll envisaged at her own school, the better planning possible in a new one allowed much' more storage space outside the class and staff rooms than in Christchurch.