GROWING PRIMARY SCHOOL ROLLS

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28542, 22 March 1958, Page 15

GROWING PRIMARY SCHOOL ROLLS

Need For Further Buildings

(From Our Own Reporter) TIMARU, March 21.

There is no cause for complacency, either in what has been achieved, or with what has yet to be done in the effort to overtake the building lag of the war and post-war years,” said the junior vice-president (Mr H. P. Fowler) at the Dominion Federation of School Committees’ Association of New Zealand conference at Timaru today. “During recent years many magnificent schools have been built and equipped,” said Mr Fowler. “The Government has made real efforts to overtake the building lag.” He said there was no cause for complacency, however. Building of school houses and teachers’ residences, and renovations to old schools had not at any time kept pace with the need. Buildings with short lives —prefabricated buildings and other makeshifts—had been widely used to ensure that all primary school children, had a roof over their heads “Now, as the first waves of children of the high birth-rate years move from the primary to the secondary schools, we are being faced with a switch in education expenditure from primary to post-primary schools. “But we must not lose sight of the fact that primary school rolls are still increasing and that the evidence of a peak having been reached is just not there,” Mr Fowler said. “The latest census of pre-school children shows an expected increase of approximately 6000 children a year for the period 1957-1962. Our federation and our associations must combat the suggestion that the problem has now passed on to post-primary schools. It has not. It is still with us here.

“We were told in the past that we had to use pre-fab. makeshifts owing to the ‘high birth rate of post-war years.’ Now we are being told today that provision must be made for these children in postprimary schools—leaving us with many make-shift buildings, and a forest of ageing prefabs,” Mr Fowler said