'Red tape' stalls school upgrade

The leaky ceiling of the main girls' bathroom has caused extensive water damage resulting in paint often falling from the ceiling.

A Northland school has spent three years bound by bureaucracy and red tape waiting for classrooms which are the "worst in New Zealand" to be rebuilt, the principal says.

Northland College principal Jim Luders said the Kaikohe school's classrooms were absolutely dilapidated.

"They leak, they have mould and they smell," Mr Luders said.

Northland College principal Jim Luders

The classrooms were the worst in New Zealand, he said. "I challenge any school to show me worse than this."

They were rundown due to decades of little or no maintenance. There was asbestos, uneven floors, ceiling tiles which had fallen off because of water damage and patches of missing carpet. "The whole school has to be demolished and rebuilt," Mr Luders, who started at the school in 2013, said. "We know it's going to happen, the question is when."

An Education Review Office report in 2012 found the "unacceptable" working conditions had a detrimental effect on staff morale and student well-being. A commissioner was appointed not long after the report.

Despite ERO's recommendation for "urgent" work on the classrooms, the school spent the last three years in limbo. The most recent ERO report, released last month, found most concerns had not been addressed.

Plans for a rebuild worth $15 million had been drawn up but were waiting for Ministry of Education approval.

All going well, the new classrooms would be finished in early 2017.

It was very hard to understand why the process was so slow, said Mr Luders. He described it as all "bureaucracy and red tape".

Ministry of Education acting head of the education infrastructure service Jerome Sheppard said $1.5 million had been spent since 2012 to address some short-term issues. They included the school not being weathertight, urgent repairs and upgrades.

"Northland College does require significant redevelopment, and we are working with the school to resolve immediate property issues as quickly as possible," Mr Sheppard said.

"To address the longer-term issues with buildings, we are planning to address these as a single redevelopment project."

Northland central regional PPTA chairwoman Adele Towgood said Northland College was not alone.