Building our schools

This Issue This is a part of the Schools feature

By - , Build 158

All buildings are unique, but school buildings have some special requirements. Build talked to the Ministry of Education to find out why.

Hobsonville Point Primary School.
Hobsonville Point Primary School.
There are plenty of new schools and classrooms being built, especially in Auckland and Canterbury.
Marshland School.
Kahurangi School.

THE MINISTRY OF EDUCATION is not only responsible for overseeing the system that educates millions of New Zealanders, it’s also accountable for the government’s second-largest property portfolio.

In 2016, it had around 2,300 schools on its books, with a replacement property value close to $24 billion. The Ministry works with school boards of trustees to ensure all those school facilities are safe and well maintained and support effective teaching and learning.

There are plenty of new schools and classrooms being built, especially in Auckland and Canterbury.

Choice to repair or redevelop

‘In 2016/17, we have a budget in excess of $1 billion to look after and expand the school property portfolio. A percentage of this goes to school boards of trustees to manage themselves, while the Ministry runs large and complex projects so schools can focus on teaching and learning,’ says Jerome Sheppard, Head of the Education Infrastructure Service at the Ministry.

With a portfolio of this size, it’s important to spend wisely and ensure schools receive the best possible value in terms of built assets, teaching opportunities and learning outcomes for students.

‘The average age of our buildings is over 40 years old, reflecting all the building that went on in the 60s and 70s to cater for the Baby Boom. These buildings are still structurally sound. The challenge is to make sure they remain fit for their purpose – teaching and learning,’ says Jerome.

Weathertightness and other issues

‘We have a small proportion of schools that require major building redevelopments. In these cases, schools’ business-as-usual funding is insufficient, so we contribute additional funds to enable the school to resolve the problem. Funding has been announced for around 30 of these projects.’

As well as work to replace ageing school facilities, major redevelopment projects encompass work to correct systemic building problems, such as weathertightness issues or strengthening earthquake-prone buildings. When a serious and widespread problem is discovered, it can create a significant unforeseen capital expense.

Take Koru School in Mangere for example. Built in 1999 at the peak of the weathertightness crisis, the school’s property value was essentially written off, with 27 classrooms demolished and rebuilt from scratch at a cost of more than $20 million.

Western Springs College is another example of a school with weathertightness problems, but it was also constructed on a former landfill site. The school’s buildings suffered extensive subsidence and gas leakage issues. The Ministry is investing $79 million into its redevelopment, the most expensive project of its kind to date.

Adapting to change

‘The Ministry also needs to invest where there is significant population growth, and we seek this funding separately through the yearly Budget process. Auckland is an obvious example. We’re building new schools and adding new classrooms to schools around the Auckland region to cater for population growth,’ says Jerome.

‘We also have additional work under way on 115 schools in Christchurch as a result of the 2010/11 earthquakes. This requires a varying degree of building work, from demolishing and completely rebuilding schools, through to more modest improvement work in the hundreds of thousands rather than in the millions,’ he says. ‘All up, we’re investing $1.137 billion on school buildings in Christchurch over 10 years.’

Marshland School.

Shift in spending control

These days, schools have a great deal of autonomy when it comes to spending funding for building work.

Before the 1989 Education Act, which formed the current Ministry, schools were controlled by regional education boards. The board would determine which schools in its region would receive building upgrades, and a staff architect developed the design.

Control moved to school boards of trustees

The Act passed control directly to the school boards of trustees.

‘One of the implications of giving the boards responsibility for property investment was variability of outcomes. Many schools and boards did a good job, but it’s always a time-consuming task. We were concerned that, in some schools, teaching spaces were left untouched for decades as other parts of the school such as admin areas were getting upgraded,’ says Jerome.

Back to top

Priorities set for schools

The Ministry addressed the problem in 2010 by introducing criteria for how schools could allocate funding for their building and facilities. The boards of trustees still control the funds, but the criteria established priorities they were expected to follow.

‘The first priority is to address urgent health and safety issues. The second is essential infrastructure that enables the school to continue to operate – repairing a roof or replacing a boiler, those kinds of things. The third priority, once all the basics are done, is to upgrade school learning spaces to modern standards,’ he says.

‘This very quickly sent the signal that schools need to consider how teaching and learning could be supported by upgrading their teaching spaces.’ (For more on linking design to learning, see pages 53–54.)

More projects managed by Ministry

The Ministry also manages many more building projects since the changes in 2010. ‘Back in 2009, about 90% of projects were run independently by boards of trustees. Today, in terms of dollar value, we run about 70% of projects directly. The boards still handle the smaller projects, such as refitting a classroom or replacing a roof,’ he says.

‘The Ministry is principal to the contract and handles delivery of most new learning spaces for roll growth and all new schools and major redevelopments. Schools still have input, but it is in a key client capacity.’

Jerome says this involves a great deal of communication with the school, via the boards of trustees and other groups, early in the design process.

Design guides to help process

‘With any new school or major redevelopment, the board will author what we call an education brief, which sets out how the school wants teaching and learning to happen. We pair that with a property brief, which specifies things like the size of the spaces, how many air changes are required per hour and the acoustic performance. These two documents form the project brief, which goes to the design team,’ says Craig Cliff, Senior Policy Manager in the Ministry’s Education Infrastructure Service.

The Ministry also publishes several guides for designers and boards of trustees to step them through the performance requirements of future learning spaces. The Designing quality learning spaces series, for example, covers topics such as heating and ventilation, acoustics and lighting in schools.

‘The Ministry doesn’t want to tell schools how to teach or how their learning should take place, and we’re not trying to force a certain type of building design on them. We’re trying to help them to avoid certain design issues and to futureproof their infrastructure as much as possible, bearing in mind that these buildings may be used for the next 50 years,’ says Craig.

While it’s not recommended that schools deviate from the design guidelines, it is permitted, provided the school can demonstrate they understand the implications of their design decisions and support this with learning research.

Kahurangi School.

Post-occupancy evaluations

The Ministry carries out post-occupancy evaluations on every large development to see how the buildings and learning spaces are performing.

‘We talk to teachers and learners about the issues they have with the building. In most cases, we hear about defects such as door handles that are loose or lights that take too long to turn on. The relatively minor nature of those complaints tells us we’re doing a pretty good job with the important aspects,’ he says.

‘Sometimes teachers have issues adapting to new learning spaces, but generally, we’ve found that the more they collaborate, particularly scheduling their activities, the better the spaces perform for everyone.’

Back to top

Download the PDF

More articles about these topics

Articles are correct at the time of publication but may have since become outdated.

Hobsonville Point Primary School.
Hobsonville Point Primary School.
There are plenty of new schools and classrooms being built, especially in Auckland and Canterbury.
Marshland School.
Kahurangi School.

Advertisement

Advertisement