Babylon Sister writes “Closing Cambridge High School’s library two years ago was “a big mistake” according to Kiwi Education Minister Trevor Mallard. A new library was reopened yesterday. …article from the NZ Inquirer.
“A library was not a luxury, it was a necessity of life”, he told guests, staff and students.”Today marks a new start for one of the most important facilities in the school,” he said. The original library was closed in July 2003 by former principal Alison Annan who wanted to turn it into a cybercafe that was never built.
Mr. Mallard said the Education Ministry did not have a hand in closing the old library. “We run a very decentralised system, and powers are vested in boards of trustees and principals. In among this is the power to make some quite big mistakes, of which this was one,” he said. The school has spent nearly $450,000 (NZ dollars) to refurbish the building and get the library operational.
Babylon Sister writes “Closing Cambridge High School’s library two years ago was “a big mistake” according to Kiwi Education Minister Trevor Mallard. A new library was reopened yesterday. …article from the NZ Inquirer.
“A library was not a luxury, it was a necessity of life”, he told guests, staff and students.”Today marks a new start for one of the most important facilities in the school,” he said. The original library was closed in July 2003 by former principal Alison Annan who wanted to turn it into a cybercafe that was never built.
Mr. Mallard said the Education Ministry did not have a hand in closing the old library. “We run a very decentralised system, and powers are vested in boards of trustees and principals. In among this is the power to make some quite big mistakes, of which this was one,” he said. The school has spent nearly $450,000 (NZ dollars) to refurbish the building and get the library operational.The 1200 students at the school have been using home computers and the public library to get information they need. They have also had to rely on the 60 computer terminals in the school’s computer labs.
Pearl Paki, 15, said they should not have closed the old library. “We went without books for ages.” Ben Clarke, a year 13 student, said he didn’t think a library at school was going to make much difference. “I was doing a physics project, there were no books on how TVs worked. So I used the computers at school. Usually we get time off classes to go to the computers if we need to study something,” he said.
But Simon Wilkinson, 17, said that it was unfair to students who didn’t have internet at home not to have a library. “They’d fall behind,” he said.
Some books from the original library were stored in classrooms, and about 170 went to Cambridge Public Library.
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