North Shore Times (New Zealand)
School gets $18m classroom investment
Torbay School is one of four Auckland primary schools benefiting from a $18 million Government investment to build more classrooms as rolls increase.
The investment will fund 30 new classrooms across the four schools, providing 460 new student places in total.
Education Minister Nikki Kaye announced the new funding in Torbay on Thursday.
Torbay School will receive $8 million from the budget for a 12-classroom block of eight new and four replacement classrooms.
Mt Albert’s Owairaka District School will get five new rooms and three replacements, Kereru Park Campus in Papakura will get an additional four, and Manurewa’s Clendon Park School will be funded for an additional six.
Kaye said the schools were chosen on the basis of their roll growth, as well as a need to modernise the schools’ infrastructure.
‘‘What really needs to happen is, totally separate to the massive upgrade that we’re doing about leaky buildings and modern upgrades, we have to have a 30-year plan for Auckland,’’ she said.
‘‘We’ve got to shift from a model whereby we’re catching up on growth to a model whereby we’re building ahead. We’re well on the way to doing that.’’
‘‘We've got to shift from a model whereby we're catching up on growth to a model whereby we're building ahead. ’’ Nikki Kaye
Torbay School principal Wendy Sandifer said the announcement was welcome news after years of campaigning for funding.
Some of the school’s buildings are over 40 years old and due for an upgrade, while a growing roll also puts pressure on teaching space.
‘‘For the last eight years, we’ve grown by a class or half a class every year ... So, we’ve had significant growth,’’ she said.
The new rooms will be homed in a two-story building which will take two years to complete.
‘‘We’ll get a better purposebuilt building that will have better lighting, better acoustics, be built for the sun and warmth, as opposed to our old buildings, which were built for a different style of teaching,’’ Sandifer said.
She estimated the new classrooms would add about 120 students to the roll, which currently sits about about 500.