Back to the Beginning...

Welcome to the Beckenham School Rebuild blog.  

The Board and I have been concerned for quite a while on how we were going to keep the school community in the loop with everything that is going on with the proposed rebuild. Hence this blog to provide a communication vehicle.

One of the biggest challenges is often we don’t have much to report, so how do you say nothing! We've decided that it’s better to tell you that there is nothing to tell rather than not telling you at all. I can at least let you know when I’ve attended meetings (and I can promise you over the last year there have been many!).

So lets go 'Back to the Beginning' and look at the Timeline so far:

• October 2011 - Following the Sept 2010 and Feb 2011 earthquakes, the Ministry of Education announced an an engagement process to develop a draft Education Renewal Recovery Plan to guide the future shape of education in greater Christchurch.
• September 2012 - Minister Parata announced the new landscape for Greater Christchurch Schools - being put into Clusters, and the plan to rebuild, close or merge a number of schools. As a part of this announcement, Beckenham School was placed in the St Martins Cluster (since renamed as the Ōpāwaho Learning Community Cluster) along with the following schools: St Martins, Ōpāwa, Waltham, St Peters Beckenham, St Marks, Hillview Christian, Christchurch Rudolf Steiner, te Kura Kaupapa Māori o Waitaha
• April 2013 - Ōpāwaho Cluster were one of the first Chch clusters to begin the process of Master Planning (as a cluster). Lorraine Moss from the MOE was appointed as our Cluster Case Manager. Jasmax architects were appointed and the Master Planning process happened over the next few months. Many meetings were held with the school, including the BOT to work through this process. It is our understanding that this Master plan was never signed off as completed by the MOE, due to issues around cost, among other things. At this stage, it was still a theoretical exercise, in that no schools had any indication of the time-frame for the delivery of this work. The budget was unclear and no confirmation could be given around the continued place of the Ferndale Satellite class at Beckenham.

• June 2013 - Murray Humm appointed as Beckenham School Property Manager at MOE (taking over from Peter Fenwick

• November 2013 - Hon Minister Parata announced the programme to invest $1.137 billion on renewing schools infrastructure in Greater Christchurch. This programme indicated that Beckenham School's work would be completed in Term 4 2016, and would come into the category of "Major Redevelopment: Work typically over $5m or of a complex nature. Aims for a comprehensive upgrade of teaching spaces to core modern learning environment standards."

(This time-frame was clearly very tight, and from a teaching perspective, required us to immediately and rapidly move to shift our practice to a more flexible and collaborative model than single-cell classrooms from the 19th century would naturally provide.)

• November 2013 - Following the Minister's announcement the Board of Trustees agreed to begin prototyping with our current building stock, to enable the physical breaking down of barriers between existing classroom spaces. The first space to be 'opened up' was the Intermediate Hub, followed over the next 18 months by R14/15, R10/11, R21/22, R5/6 and R3/4.

• During 2014 and 2015, our school focus has been, and continues to be, developing robust collaborative teaching practices.

• August -October 2014 - We formally enter the CSR programme with the procurement and appointment of a Project Manager: Tess Browne at TBIG (The Building Intelligence Group). (Tess is also appointed as Cashmere Primary School's project manager - the two schools are being worked as a 'bundle' for procurement purposes by the MOE)

• October and November 2014 We held two Whānau Hui at school to understand better what our families are looking for in terms of the experiences, values and competencies that they want their children to have during their time at Beckenham School. 

• November 2014 - MOE confirmed that two satellite classes of Ferndale School would be built as part of the Beckenham rebuild programme and dedicated funds for that project would be added to the original budget.

• January 2015 - Vikanda Bagrie appointed as MOE Property Delivery Manager -(taking over from Lorraine Moss and Murray Humm) 

• January/February 2015 - Design Team procurement process undertaken by MOE for Beckenham and Cashmere Primary and team of Stevenson & Turner / Hayball appointed.
• Murray Robertson - Architect - Stevenson & Turner
• Richard Leonard - Hayball Pty Ltd
• Mark Newdick - Moorhead and Newdick Landscape Architects
• February 2015 - Pulling together information from the two hui, our school documentation and developing collaborative teaching idealogy from many staff meetings during 2014, I produced, with the support of our then assigned CSR project manager Lorraine Moss, a Project Brief which was sent to the Ministry of Education to inform the design process.

• February 2015 - First on-site meeting with the newly appointed architect and landscape designer

• February - April 2015 - Review of original master plan, resulting in a new master plan being drawn up. 

• May 2015 - Master plan submitted to MOE Design Review Panel. (not yet released by MOE for publication)

• June - July 2015 - Whilst waiting for the confirmation of the Master Plan review, the design team have been beginning to move into the concept design stage. The architect has continued to visit the school on numerous occasions and has also met with groups of students and staff to talk through ideas.

If you would like to read more information on the Christchurch Schools Rebuild (CSR) programme, there is a regional webpage that has all the background and a quarterly newsletter is also produced which is worth reading. The current edition shows a timeline - Beckenham School is between the Master Planning Phase and the Concept Design Phase. (It is worth noting that, due to our early place in the CSR programme, many of the detailed timelines, frameworks and support packages being developed by the MOE are still being put together).

Naturally a rebuild means some demolition and then building work begins and I know that many of you might be wondering what this means for you and your children and when will I be able to give you some dates and plans.

I want to share as much as possible with you. As this is a Ministry of Education project I have to respect the commercial processes that need to be followed and can only release information as they allow us to. Clearly, we are working to a tight time-frame and there is much to be organised as we proceed.

I’ll be in touch again very soon!

Sandy