102 | Wesley Primary School - Te Kura Tuatahi o Wēteri Virginia Wright Rebuild answers modern learning challenges Stage One of the rebuild comprises 12 teaching stations across three hubs. COMMUNITY Proud to be suppliers of Mechanical Services to Wesley Primary School. Phone 09 827 0697 • 1016C Great South Road, Penrose, Auckland • P.O. Box 80237, Green Bay, Auckland Successfully delivering projects across the North Island for over 90 years Cost Management | Development Management | Project Funder Services Sustainability | Rebuild Estimates | Dispute Resolution Auckland +64 9 303 4394 | Hamilton +64 7 211 7926 | Napier +64 21 169 2249 | Wellington +64 4 499 1468 | Queenstown +64 3 442 596 | www.maltbys.co.nz Lou Reddy began his role as principal of Wesley Primary School - Te Kura Tuatahi o Wēteri in July 2020 taking over from Brenda Martin. He came from Tamaki Primary in East Auckland but while he was new to the school he wasn’t new to the wider community having taught at Wesley Intermediate for eight years earlier in his career. He credits Brenda with having put in the hard work with the Ministry of Education to secure the full rebuild of Wesley Primary which has just completed its first of three stages. After the summer holidays new pupils will be starting school in the new building. Located in Mount Roskill, Auckland, Wesley Primary caters for a diverse mix of Year 1 to 6 children with a high percentage of Pacifika, Mãori and immigrant students. “It was quite nerve-wracking coming as a first-time principal to a high-performing school that was really delivering for a low decile community with a large number of priority learners and then at the same time working with the rebuild. “I’m really blessed to be working with our new Deputy Principal Shelley Saunders and our new Assistant Principal Andy Crowe to be able to accelerate into our Stage Two having completed Stage One.” The school design brings together lengthy advice and consultation, combined with the experience of the different teachers working in the school and their hands-on knowledge of what they need on a day-to-day level to help all their students achieve. They’ve worked closely with the Ministry of Education delivery From Day One Wesley Primary School expect to be making the most of 95% of their new learning environment thanks to all the trialing they’ve done previously, with only 5% needing to be regularly reviewed to ensure it’s working as planned: the payoff for all their planning and foresight. The just completed full design scope for Stage Two indicated a lack of play and outdoor space despite two good-sized allocated spaces. “We worked out that we needed a far more flexible environment in our hall, in our walkways, our in-between spaces.” The creative thinking via “design sprints” and numerous consultation sessions with RTA studio to resolve this resulted in things like managers (Bernard Fenton and Fiona Westerkamp), their architects Moshin Mussa (RTA studio), their builders led by Alex Hall (Naylor Love) and Mãori advisors (Harko Brown and Hare Paniora). Together with team leaders Sam Prenderghast and Heidi Rose their team utilised the innovative frameworks created by UK based Terry White founder of Planning, Learning Spaces in Practice (PLSiP), to create a beautiful modern learning environment. “All of our team members analysed and reviewed our current practices and pedagogy, we then looked at the challenges in our current learning environment, in the old school, and what we needed in the new space to meet those learning challenges,” says Lou. As he says, every school in New Zealand has its own challenges, no school is perfect, and he’s extremely grateful to be able to take a design thinking approach to solving those challenges specific to Wesley Primary. “You know what works well in these learning spaces, you know what doesn’t work well and what you want to change. “Then you actively prototype and design to meet that learning challenge. You can do that in any building whether rebuilding or renovating, you can do it in any space while using PLSiP,” he says. Stage One of the rebuild comprises 12 teaching stations across three hubs. Each hub has four teachers and includes breakout spaces. “Three in our senior school and four in the junior, and this allows for flexibility in what we call our ‘planning learning spaces framework for a functional teaching environment.’”
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