Education Minister Erica Stanford has committed $31 million to correcting the “failed experiment” of open-plan classrooms at 90 schools.
“Parents, students, teachers have been telling us for a long time that the open-plan classrooms don’t work,” she told Midday Report.
“They don’t work for young people who have additional learning needs or neurodiversity, they don’t work for children in general, they’re loud, it’s difficult for children to concentrate.
“It has been a failed experiment over many, many decades and it’s time to put an end to it.”
Stanford announced in July that the government would stop building open-plan classrooms, but on Wednesday she has announced the government will also revisit existing open-plan classrooms to build walls between them.
“Now we do need to go back and retrofit those classrooms because I’ve spoken to so many teachers who are just begging us for quieter, calmer classrooms,” the minister said.
RNZ
Open-plan classrooms became an official government strategy in 2011 under National’s then Education Minister Hekia Parata, but Stanford said they had existed long before then.
“When I was five years old in 1983 I was learning in an open-plan classroom, there were three classrooms all joined together,” she said.
“All governments have done it, even the previous Labour government continued to build them. It’s been done over many, many decades and it’s just time to put an end to it, I’m not interested in playing a blame game, I’m interested in outcomes for children.”
She clarified many of the new walls would have glass doors.
“We’re not actually putting physical walls back, we’re putting walls back that have big glass sliding doors that are soundproof so you can use the room flexibly,” she said.
“There are some good things about teachers being able to see each other, and also have that flexibility of opening up to a larger space when they’re doing project work or art or they want to do something together.
“[But] all teachers I speak to say when it’s time for explicit teaching to children who need to focus, they need a quiet space, so having that flexibility is the key.”
The $31.3m investment would fund walls in 600 classrooms across 90 schools, but Stanford said there were plans to start design work on a further 755 classrooms at another 80 schools.
“To the remaining 755 classrooms, we’re going to come in and look at what needs to be done because we’ll have to design where the wall goes, work out whether we need to move HVAC systems, or rebuild parts of the walls,” she said.
“So we won’t know what the total bill is but I’ve committed to saying over future budgets and through future maintenance we will continue to do this, because it’s too important not to.”
Discussion about this post