BODY'S CONCERN ON PREFABS

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32613, 22 May 1971, Page 16

BODY'S CONCERN ON PREFABS

(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, May 21. The New Zealand Educational Institute is dissatisfied about 100 prefabricated classrooms the Government intends building to meet the first stage of the one-to-35 teacherpupil ratio next year.

An institute spokesman, Mr G. A. Francis, said tonight that the permanent change in primary school class numbers warranted accommodation superior to the prefabs. The prefabs would lack toilet facilities and other amenities besides being away from the main school buildings. “This situation is entirely new because the prefabs are being supplied for a permanent change in class sizes, whereas they are usually erected or shifted with a temporary rise or fall in school rolls,” he said. Two alternatives were acceptable to the institute one was the building of permanent classrooms; the other the erection of “demountables.” These were superior prefabs with better facilities, built in sections on the modular principle. This month’s issue of “National Education” points out that while the prefabs are still new they would be likely to affect general welfare because of their inadequacies. Teachers who agreed to defer smaller classes in exchange for three-year training resented the long-awai-ted achievement being marred by inadequate buildings. The Minister of Education (Mr Taiboys) might feel that education had come off well in the battle of Government departments, but figures,

even when adjusted to real values, were not the full story, the article said. The building of the prefabs is to be fully discussed by the institute, the Education Boards’ Association and Mr Taiboys. ‘ ,