Prefabricated School Rooms “Uneconomic”

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30366, 15 February 1964, Page 20

Prefabricated School Rooms “Uneconomic”

The last three prefabricated classrooms built by the Canterbury Education Board measure 32ft by 20ft and cost £ll2B each. This information interested the Canterbury School Committees’ Association on Wednesday evening, but it wanted more. It will ask for an estimate of the total cost of all prefabricated in the board’s area. Mr E. P. Winter said he had made the original inquiry because he suspected that the total cost of prefabricated classrooms would go a long way toward providing the permanent classrooms for which they were an unsatisfactory substitute. If every prefabricated unit cost about £lOOO, the scores if not hundreds in the board’s area must have cost “a packet.” All schools naturally desired permanent classrooms, said Mr Winter, but the public might not appreciate the problems created by the substitutes. In the first place, no extra toilet facilities were provided, so' existing blocks became grossly overloaded. The isolated units had to have their own heating systems and this, plus cleaning, took much extra time. The “prefabs.”

also led to distinctions between the classes occupying them and those in permanent quarters. Mr Winter said he believed the prefabrication, system could be proved unsound and uneconomic if its cost was compared with permanent additions. Too many schools had had too many “prefabs.” too long.