OPEN-AIR SCHOOL

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 146, 12 February 1932, Page 2

OPEN-AIR SCHOOL

SOME IMFRESSIONS NEW ZEALANDER PRAISES FENDALTON (CHCH.) TYPE. "Nowhere in Europe or England did I see anything to equal the Fendalton type of open-air school," said Mr. W. W. Rowntree, an executive member of the Open-Air Schools' League, who has returned to Christchurch after an extensive tour abroad during which he represented New Zealand at the annual conference of the International Open-Air Schools League. Although on the Continent openair schools were used almost exclusively for children of delicate health (said Mr. Rowntree), the conference was most interested in the applicat.ion of the open-air design to all junior schools and applauded the Fendalton type as the finest yet built. The conference was held at Brussels, Belgium, and was attended hy 450 people, representing 19 different nations, including not only the countries of Europe but the United States, XJruguay, and New Zealand. The discussion lasted for five days but since it was taken in very rapid French Mr. Rowntree had difficulty in following all the arguments. Movement in Germany.

In Europe the idea of an open-air school was still associated with illhealth, and most of the schools were open only to delicate children, who entered them on three-monthly peripds pending medical examination. In Germany the movement had been taken up very extensively, and school colonies had been formed in many parts of the country. In 1924, the first year of open-air schools, they were attended by 625 children; to-day the roll numbers exceeded 13,000. At the same time the majority of the class-rooms were not properly "open-air" and certainly not to be compared with schools of the Fendalton type. Mr. Rowntree visited open-air schools in many parts of England. At one school in London he found classrooms of a type that appealed to him since they were designed in much the same way as a bandstand. But these were found rather cold, and the teachers had to wear overcoats. At another school in the London slums — • Bow Road, East End — all the school work was done in the open air unless j it was actually raining. The classi rooms were used only for shelter. Mr. ! Rowntree found that the children, though in many cases ill-nurtured,were thriving. They were given three meals a day at the school, and rested always after dinner on stretchers in the open air. The cost of 17 meals on the five and a half days of the school week was only 3s 4d, and if the parents could not afford this it was paid by the London County Council. New Designs in England. "Open-air schools are springing up all over England," continued Mr.

Rowntree. "Birmingham has at least three, the most important of which is a boarding-school presented to the people hy Mrs. Barrow Cadbury. She gave an estate of 60 acres, sufficient money to build a dormitory, and an endowment of £1000 a year for three years. At this school they have detached open-air rooms with small desks. The children move these desks out into the open whenever possible; I remember when we arrived all the little girls were sitting out with nothing on hut a pair of shorts. If they can do that in the North of England, what should we be able to do in New Zealand?" Mr. Rowntree added that the authorities in England were waldng up to the fact that the big "upstairs" schools were not satisfaetory. He visited a new school in one of the suburbs of Liverpool — a town planning area, by the way — where all the class-rooms were on the ground-floor, each haying accommodation for only 24 to 28 children. The floor was formed of special "tiles, through which the rooms were heated from underneath. He considered this school the most revolutionary advance in design that he had seeri abroad.