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Speaker 1: Right now, the government says there will be no new

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Speaker 1: open planned barnyard classrooms built. Education Minister Erica Stanford made

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Speaker 1: of the announcement today. She says, these big open spaces

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Speaker 1: have been bad for kids and the Ministry has been

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Speaker 1: looking into it.

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Speaker 2: So they've looked at eight thousand different learning spaces in

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Speaker 2: coming to this decision, and they've used noise monitors and

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Speaker 2: light monitors and all sorts of things. And the overwhelming

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Speaker 2: feedback from schools is that teachers do not like teaching

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Speaker 2: in these classrooms. Principals do not like having these classrooms.

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Speaker 2: And it is now our position that we will not

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Speaker 2: be building any more of them unless by specific request.

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Speaker 1: Right, So what about those have already got them? At

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Speaker 1: Angiora High School has spent one and a half million

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Speaker 1: dollars getting rid of its own open plan classrooms, and

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Speaker 1: the principal, Bruce Kenny, is with me now, Hi Bruce, Hi,

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Speaker 1: how are you doing good? Thank you? So they didn't

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Speaker 1: work for you? Why not?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, for the exact same reasons there are the

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Speaker 3: Minister's talking about. Really they are the noisy will tend

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Speaker 3: to be noisier. But it was also the combination of

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Speaker 3: you know, sixty kids, two teachers. The whole deal really

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Speaker 3: didn't really work out for us.

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Speaker 1: Why would it? How many did you have? Why one

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Speaker 1: and a half million dollars to get rid of them?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, we were early and we were probably at

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Speaker 3: the forefront of the thinking of that at the time.

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Speaker 3: This was this was pre me and so we had

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Speaker 3: one one building with twenty six classrooms and essentially no walls.

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Speaker 3: One process.

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Speaker 1: So that again one building, twenty six classrooms, no walls.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, so we were quite out there.

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Speaker 1: How many kids in there?

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Speaker 3: We ran at about sort of four hundred and fifty

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Speaker 3: students and when we implemented that they were that was

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Speaker 3: pretty much our year nine cohort would go through that building. Wow, yeah, yeah.

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Speaker 1: Quite distracting four hundred and fifty kids one room.

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Speaker 3: Well, I don't think it can't be, you know, not distracting,

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Speaker 3: you know, the noise. Whilst they say more people in there,

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Speaker 3: the noise gets absorbed, it doesn't really, it really didn't

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Speaker 3: affect that that way. That was certainly what the architects

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Speaker 3: used to tell us. It was pretty overwhelming. But I

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Speaker 3: think even more importantly, if I'm honest with you, you know,

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Speaker 3: the biggest problem that we had was our community lost

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Speaker 3: faith in what we were providing.

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Speaker 1: Clearly the government's seen the light on this, But the

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Speaker 1: question I have is how did we let it happen

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Speaker 1: in the first place? You know, you know, you said

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Speaker 1: this was before your time. There are plenty of educators

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Speaker 1: who thought this was a great idea.

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Speaker 3: Well somebody obviously did, didn't they. And look, I'm gonna

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Speaker 3: be honest with you, I don't think it's a bad idea.

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Speaker 3: I think part of being in education and trying to

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Speaker 3: be at the forefront of education is that we try things.

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Speaker 3: What's a really bad idea is implementing something and then

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Speaker 3: not reviewing it to see if it actually works. I

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Speaker 3: think that's the real key where society and education sector

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Speaker 3: kind of lost its way. They didn't take the time

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Speaker 3: out to go is essentially.

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Speaker 1: Working appreciate time. Bruce Bruce Kenny, the Dunjorder High School principal.

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Speaker 1: They have reversed the open style barnyard classrooms there to

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Speaker 1: the tune of one point five million dollars.

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Speaker 3: For more from Heather Duplessy Allen Drive, listen live to

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Speaker 3: news talks.

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Speaker 1: It'd be from four pm weekdays, or follow the podcast

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Speaker 1: on iHeartRadio,