I was at the Ministers presentation to Upper Hutt City last night. There were many people, with many good questions. The Minister started with a little Power Point presentation and then he tried to answer questions from the audience. I say "tried", as I don't think anyone was particularly happy with his answers. I will try to write up some of the points raised over the next few days, as I think they deserve discussion.

A teacher made one of the sweetest points. She said that the Ministry had it all wrong when it talked about empty classrooms as being wasted space. They are creative spaces, a teaching opportunity. Not wasted spaces!

She pointed out that having a one or two empty classrooms meant that they could be set aside for special projects, and that they could be used to help resolve the scheduling conflicts that sometimes occur at a school. A school without one or two spare classrooms is a school that has no slack, a school that can't occasionally spill over into larger spaces. A school with no empty classrooms is a school without creative space!

If you stop and think about it for a while, you realise that every school should have the luxury of having creative space!