Vaughan Couillault: Secondary Principals' Association President on state schools operating over their capacity

Schools operating over their campus capacity are getting creative to cater for roll growth. 

New data shows 17% of state schools had more students enrolled than their official classroom capacity last year. 

Another 71% are operating at capacity. 

Secondary Principals' Association president Vaughan Couillault told Mike Hosking packed schools typically put in more prefabs in the first instance. 

He says they may also start to make classes bigger or use libraries and meeting rooms as classrooms. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
On that economic front, A and Z gave it's an
interesting forecast yesterday on GDP as well as the cash
right as well as housing. So I'll come to that
in the moment. Meantime, we got new dart at the
Show State School seventeen past seven. By the way, a
new dart at the Show State schools are bursting at
the seams. We got nearly fifteen hundred at capacity. Three
hundred and sixty eight are over the top. A Secondary
Principal's Association President Vorn Collio is back with us born morning.

(00:21):
Capacity is good, isn't it. Don't you think at the
end of the day you want to be full.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Yeah, you don't want a whole lot of really expensive
state assets sitting there half empty, and so being at
capacity is a good thing. Being significantly over capacity can
bring challenges on the ground, but you don't want to
hold a crowny city empty.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
Let me ask you a really simple question. Given its
immigration driven. When the immigrants come to the country and
we check out how many children they may or may
not have, then we can count the years from the
age of say one, two, three, four, five being there
at school. Why isn't this more coordinated and we, in
other words, we know they're coming.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
Yeah, when I asked that question ourselves as a SPANS executive,
that question of ministry officials. And there seems to be
some sort of disconnect between what happens at the border
and what information gets fed through to the Ministry of Education.
Not quite sure why that is, particularly when it comes
to counting the number of kids that people are bringing.

Speaker 1 (01:14):
With them exactly a glass our fall. It's a solvable problem.

Speaker 2 (01:19):
Surely you would have thought so. I just not my
field of expertise, But yeah, counting people getting off the
plane is a good place to start.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
And so all that happens if you can't, if you're
at capacity or beyond. You start sticking prefabs in the
school grounds, right.

Speaker 2 (01:33):
Yeah, or you start making classes a little bigger, or
you start using spaces like libraries or meeting rooms for
smaller classes and you just come up with creative solutions.
You start using your hall as a classroom, when you
start using your fun a new So there's there's a
little bit of wiggle room for some of us, but
then when you start pushing it a little bit further,
it becomes harder and harder.

Speaker 1 (01:54):
Is there any suggestion that any of this is going
to be relieved in any way, shape or form of
part from America Stanford's announcement this week, there's a couple
of new schools are being built with one hundred million
dollars worth of savings.

Speaker 2 (02:04):
With all due respect to the local ministry in Auckland,
there has been some really good work done and moving
some relocatables, some offsite modular builds to ease some of
those capacity issues, and there's real intent from the team
in Wellington to get this over the line. The problem
is the lag People turn up quickly, buildings don't turn
up quite so quickly. But property has been the problem

(02:26):
child of the Ministry of Education for quite some time.

Speaker 1 (02:28):
Yeah, all right, Born, have a good weekend, Born Collier,
who's the Secondary Principal's Association president. Dealing with government departments
and not having government departments share information has been an
issue in this country literally for decades. Mike. The reason
the doctors are striking is negotiating table hasn't worked. The
government needs to pay them fully to compensate for the
condition's issue, which government has caused because of the loose
immigration values. I have no idea what that means. All

(02:49):
I know is the doctors are asking for twelve percent,
the health New Zealander offering one to two percent, but
twelve percent is ludicrous. Seven more from the mic Asking
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