Wellington Girls’ College students have set up school at Parliament after it was revealed their main classroom block was prone to damage in an earthquake.
“We just thought we’d put our classroom here, put our field here ’cause we haven’t got one of our own,” head of the Student Learning Committee Teresa Ng said.
The top two floors of the school’s Brook Block have been assessed as 15% of the New Building Standard, well short of the 34% or below rating used to categorise a building as prone to damage in an earthquake.
The Ministry of Education identified the building was a potential risk from an earthquake in 2020, but the school found out only by chance in April this year, when requesting wider information from the ministry about the business case for rebuilding the school.
Ng said students wanted to show how frustrated they were by the situation.
“We don’t have a specific demand for the Ministry of Education other than we really just want an explanation and an apology.”
“We’re wondering if they have listening comprehension skills like they test us on.”
Ng said, had the earthquake risk was communicated by the Ministry of Education earlier, the school was likely to have “come up with a better solution that didn’t lead to us having no classrooms left”.
Ministry of Education head of property Sam Fowler told 1News yesterday the Ministry has apologised to the school. He said the school did receive communication of the risk the building posed but acknowledged this “could have been better”.
Students were working from home while staff decided where the 360 students and staff that used the space would be accommodated.
“The risk of a one in a thousand year earthquake probably isn’t that high in the next four or five months, if one was to occur, there is a really severe risk to life and so we’re not prepared to consider that,” principal Julia Davidson told 1News yesterday about the school board’s decision to not occupy the space.
Davidson wanted the Ministry to replace the building, as that was the better option for the taxpayer in the long term. The ministry hadn’t made a long term decision but has told the school it planned to strengthen the space by next year.
Ng said students lost 20 minutes of class time a day because it took longer to walk from one room to another with route closures.
“In a less physical way, I think it’s really just this feeling of hopelessness and frustration that we can’t do anything about it because even the board doesn’t really have any control of how long it’s taking to build Tower (block) back up, how much information they withhold from us … so it’s just really this feeling of ‘downtrodden-ness’ I guess.”
WGC responds
In a statement this afternoon, Wellington Girls’ College principal Julia Davidson said students would not be going back into the Brook addition for teaching and learning, instead saying that from tomorrow a different year group will be rostered to learn from home each day.
“We will have to roster one year group home a day until we have our latest prefabs up and running — that date is expected to be September 16,” she said.
This is expected to continue for a month while more prefabricated buildings are set up. Prefabs are already in use at the school because another building was found to be vulnerable in an earthquake.
Davidson said the Ministry of Education had leased space at the Royal Society Te Apārangi — a one minute walk from the school — where students could do their remote learning from too.
“We are going to use this as a Learning Hub. This means that students can come and work there on their rostered day instead of being at home. It will be staffed by a welcoming adult who is there to help students stay on task and supervise.”
There would also be changes to online learning for the remainder of the year, with students expected to follow the normal school day timetable delivered through online platforms such as Google Classroom, Google Meet and Kamar.
“Students will be required to have their cameras on … We need to see them. Teachers will monitor work is done in a variety of ways we have discussed in a staff meeting. There will be a clear expectation that the work will be done,” Davidson said.
Student: ‘You physically cannot hear the teacher’
Yesterday 1News spoke to a student who was concerned the situation would further disrupt their learning, after years of demolition and construction to other buildings onsite.
“With the classes having to be stopped, because you physically cannot hear the teacher over the jackhammer-like noise so close, because the buildings were conjoined, that it was really, really, like, hard to focus, because that noise was so close to you, and you couldn’t ignore it,” she said.
The student said earplugs were used in class at times because of the noise.
Another building was demolished over the Christmas break last year, with prefabricated classrooms set up on the field to accommodate students, she said.
The students said that leaves them with “severely limited” options for PE and sports. The school’s hall and music rooms have also been demolished.
She said the latest news comes after finding out earlier this year that Pipitea classroom block was also prone to damage in an earthquake.
“We are losing our school,” she stated in a letter.
“I find this incredibly frustrating especially when I see the campuses of other Wellington Schools. Just look at our brother school Wellington College; they have three fields. We have none.”
This morning, Labour leader and former education minister Chris Hipkins told Breakfast the school and its students had been “treated very poorly by the Ministry of Education.
