Classes in teachers’ homes?

Press, 9 December 1983, Page 4

Classes in teachers’ homes?

Four Avenues School may begin the 1984 school year with classes held in teachers’ homes. Christchurch’s alternative secondary school still has no location for next year. Although the school will continue as a unit of Hagley High Schoo], with access to Hagley’s facilities, parents and teachers are still looking for a site. Senior students would be slotted into Hagley courses in many cases, but the essentially alternative features of Four Avenues would be concentrated off the Hagley site, said the acting chairman of the Hagley board, Mr Gerald Thomson. The school would revert to its original concept using a variety of city venues and resources. Because no suitable inner-city base had been found for the whole programme, it had been decided to establish a number of smaller locations for tutorial activities, said Mr Thomson. The 72 pupils on Four Avenues’ roll were split into four tutorial groups, which could meet separately. Parents and teachers were looking for smaller sites that could be used as tutorial venues. If none could be found before the school year began groups might have to meet in teachers’ or parents’ homes, said Mr Thomson. The parents of Four Avenues pupils had undertaken to meet the costs of several smaller venues if a single site could not be found.

The school would continue to offer the wide range of

both alternative and academic studies, he said. Several individual venues might well prove as effective for promoting the alternative learning concept as a single site.

If the school split to meet at separate venues the whole school would meet together once a week, Mr Thomson said. To open the year the full school would meet at the Lutheran hall at the corner of Montreal Street and Worcester Street on January 30.