School Toilets “Of The Workhouse Variety”

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31223, 22 November 1966, Page 23

School Toilets “Of The Workhouse Variety”

Successive generations of pupils at the Temuka Primary School had been using toilets “of the workhouse variety” since 1883, said the headmaster (Mr F. Turner). It was only the intervention of the Health Department which had brought about an improvement in the condition of the toilets.

Mr Turner said the department had been alerted by two outbreaks of dysentery among pupils at the school during the last three years.

Improvements had just been completed after a conference of representatives of the Canterbury Education Board, the school committee, and the medical officer of Health. Mr Turner said it was rather ironical that action should be taken virtually at the last minute.

The toilets would be bulldozed down to make way for new classrooms for the TeI muka High School.

! He said no-one would be happy until the new school iwas built.

“It is us who are suffering and we are very concerned at the delays in building the new school,’’ he said. Mr Turner said the Canterbury Education Board had done everything possible to improve conditions in the primary school, which was built 83 years ago.

“The board has poured thousands of pounds into it to make things a bit better,” he said.

When the new high school was built, the primary school would move into the present high school which was opened in 1949. Mr Turner said the new buildings had been promised for 1968.