Chris Abercrombie: PPTA President on the number of schools over capacity

The education sector's hopeful further investment into school classrooms is on the way. 

New data shows 368 state schools had more students enrolled than their official classroom capacity last year – almost 1500 are at capacity. 

Education Minister Erica Stanford announced $100 million for school property, with new schools and classrooms in Auckland. 

PPTA President Chris Abercrombie told Ryan Bridge it's got to be supercharged, so more schools can get re-locatable classrooms when they need them. 

He says schools are trying to find interesting solutions to the problem – he's heard of one using a Masonic Lodge over the road to help. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Schools apparently bursting at the seams. This is new figures
this morning from the Ministry of Education showing nearly fifteen
hundred schools are at capacity in terms of kids in classes.
Three hundred and sixty eight are over Schools say they're
basically having to make do put kids where they can.
Chris Abercrombie's DPPTA president with us this morning. Chris, good morning,
good morning, Good to have you on the show. So

(00:21):
how bad is it? How bad is it that there
are three hundred and sixty eight actually over capacity?

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Oh, it's really bad. And as you said, schools are
making decisions. You know, kids are working in the library.
I heard of one school that is using the Mason's
Lodge across the road from the school to support it.
So schools are trying to find really interesting solutions to
this problem.

Speaker 1 (00:41):
Are they in any particular area or are they spread
across the country.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
It's mostly an Auckland issue, but there is also in
other areas. So I'm from Southland and so you know
the schools will have thirty kids turn up to the
if you've only got three hundred, there's a lot of
kids turning up all of a.

Speaker 1 (00:59):
Sudden are you not inspired? What are you hopeful? Given
Erica Stamford's announcement yesterday about the building of the new classrooms,
the building of the new school in west Auckland, does
that give you some hope.

Speaker 2 (01:13):
Oh? Absolutely, it's always great having new classrooms. We just
got to supercharge that in a sense. So we've got
to get those relocatables that she talked about sorted. So
there's a seraplus of those so they can be delivered
to schools when they need them.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
Does it surprise you, Probably not, because you've been in
the sector for a while, But it surprises me just
how long it was taking for schools to get projects
off the ground. They spent years with the architects going
back and forth and back and forth in walks Erica Stanford,
and suddenly we've got a standardized plan that we can
just replicate everywhere.

Speaker 2 (01:48):
Yeah, so we used to have there, We used to
have I mean eron or will listen and remember the
Nelson blocks that were in a lot of schools, and
so we used to have these standardized plans. We went
away from those, and it definitely slowed down the process.
So hopefully we can get it sorted.

Speaker 1 (02:01):
Why did we go away from them?

Speaker 2 (02:02):
Chris, I'm not entirely sure. There was this sort of
model learning environment phase that we went through, but at
the heart of it, teachers us want warm, clean, dry
classrooms women went to call in summer and suitable for
teaching and learning. There is an issue with specialist space,
it's like workshops and labs, but I'm sure we can

(02:22):
overcome that.

Speaker 1 (02:23):
Surely, surely, Chris. Appreciate your time this morning, Chris Ebercromby,
who's the PPTA president.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
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