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Speaker 1: Schools apparently bursting at the seams. This is new figures

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Speaker 1: this morning from the Ministry of Education showing nearly fifteen

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Speaker 1: hundred schools are at capacity in terms of kids in classes.

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Speaker 1: Three hundred and sixty eight are over Schools say they're

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Speaker 1: basically having to make do put kids where they can.

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Speaker 1: Chris Abercrombie's DPPTA president with us this morning. Chris, good morning,

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Speaker 1: good morning, Good to have you on the show. So

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Speaker 1: how bad is it? How bad is it that there

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Speaker 1: are three hundred and sixty eight actually over capacity?

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Speaker 2: Oh, it's really bad. And as you said, schools are

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Speaker 2: making decisions. You know, kids are working in the library.

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Speaker 2: I heard of one school that is using the Mason's

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Speaker 2: Lodge across the road from the school to support it.

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Speaker 2: So schools are trying to find really interesting solutions to

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Speaker 2: this problem.

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Speaker 1: Are they in any particular area or are they spread

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Speaker 1: across the country.

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Speaker 2: It's mostly an Auckland issue, but there is also in

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Speaker 2: other areas. So I'm from Southland and so you know

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Speaker 2: the schools will have thirty kids turn up to the

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Speaker 2: if you've only got three hundred, there's a lot of

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Speaker 2: kids turning up all of a.

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Speaker 1: Sudden are you not inspired? What are you hopeful? Given

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Speaker 1: Erica Stamford's announcement yesterday about the building of the new classrooms,

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Speaker 1: the building of the new school in west Auckland, does

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Speaker 1: that give you some hope.

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Speaker 2: Oh? Absolutely, it's always great having new classrooms. We just

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Speaker 2: got to supercharge that in a sense. So we've got

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Speaker 2: to get those relocatables that she talked about sorted. So

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Speaker 2: there's a seraplus of those so they can be delivered

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Speaker 2: to schools when they need them.

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Speaker 1: Does it surprise you, Probably not, because you've been in

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Speaker 1: the sector for a while, But it surprises me just

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Speaker 1: how long it was taking for schools to get projects

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Speaker 1: off the ground. They spent years with the architects going

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Speaker 1: back and forth and back and forth in walks Erica Stanford,

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Speaker 1: and suddenly we've got a standardized plan that we can

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Speaker 1: just replicate everywhere.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, so we used to have there, We used to

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Speaker 2: have I mean eron or will listen and remember the

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Speaker 2: Nelson blocks that were in a lot of schools, and

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Speaker 2: so we used to have these standardized plans. We went

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Speaker 2: away from those, and it definitely slowed down the process.

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Speaker 2: So hopefully we can get it sorted.

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Speaker 1: Why did we go away from them?

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Speaker 2: Chris, I'm not entirely sure. There was this sort of

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Speaker 2: model learning environment phase that we went through, but at

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Speaker 2: the heart of it, teachers us want warm, clean, dry

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Speaker 2: classrooms women went to call in summer and suitable for

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Speaker 2: teaching and learning. There is an issue with specialist space,

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Speaker 2: it's like workshops and labs, but I'm sure we can

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Speaker 2: overcome that.

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Speaker 1: Surely, surely, Chris. Appreciate your time this morning, Chris Ebercromby,

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Speaker 1: who's the PPTA president.

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Speaker 2: For more from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge, Listen live

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