Constantly increasing numbers of students and ever higher demands on the classrooms have led to more and more children being taught in makeshift arrangements. The situation is likely to get worse.
In Switzerland, more and more children are going to school in makeshift classrooms.
The pupils of the Obwalden municipality of Kerns had two reasons to be happy on July 5th. On the occasion of the ground-breaking ceremony for the Willa school building, everyone received a pastry in the shape of a rascal. Above all, however, the prospect of being able to move into state-of-the-art, new classrooms in autumn 2023 was enticing. But nothing has worked on the construction site since the beginning of September. Only a few rebars protruding from the ground indicate that the youth of the village, which has 6,500 inhabitants, will one day be taught here.
What happened? The authorities have pulled the emergency brake and temporarily stopped the project. “The reason was communication problems with the architect and different ideas about the project structure and project management,” says Kernser municipal councilor Daniela Zumstein. The fact that school building construction in progress is so abruptly suspended in Switzerland may be an extreme case. But he also draws attention to a misery that many communities have to grapple with.
More students and increasing needs
They are the negative consequences of a construction boom. The main driver is the increasing number of students. Between 2010/11 and 2020/21, the number of pupils at the compulsory level in Switzerland rose by 6.9 percent to 976,000 children and young people. And according to forecasts by the Federal Statistical Office (BfS), the increase will continue at least until 2031.
However, these forecasts by the BfS are already out of date, as they do not include the children and young people who fled from the Ukraine. The planning company Eckhaus AG recently calculated for the “NZZ am Sonntag” that due to this development, communities throughout Switzerland have to create classrooms for around 3,000 additional classes over the next ten years.
More and more classrooms of ever higher quality are needed because new forms of learning require more space. In addition, the school and family-supplementing day structures place additional demands on the spatial design and the technical infrastructure of school facilities.
A large part of these developments was foreseeable, but in many places the authorities overslept the school room planning. So the city of Zurich. Only three years ago, the responsible city councilors André Odermatt and Filippo Leutenegger launched a “school room offensive”. The annual investment costs are to amount to CHF 150 million in the future – three times as much as before. In addition to new buildings and pavilions, office and commercial space will also be rented in the future and used for school purposes.
In Zurich, the creation of new classrooms went surprisingly smoothly. A school for six primary and twelve secondary school classes is to be set up in one of the stadium towers on the Hardturm site. But now obstacles appear. In January, thanks to the support of the left and green parties, the Zurich municipal council passed a motion calling for stricter noise protection measures for school buildings. Due to these requirements, the change of use is likely to be significantly more expensive than originally calculated.
Not only in the big city, but also in smaller towns and in the countryside, schools are becoming interim users in sometimes unusual premises. At the beginning of the new school year in Wil (St. Gallen), two school classes moved into a former police station. There were no major modifications. Only a few walls were torn out – and the new school building, like the «St. Galler Tagblatt» reported. In the meantime, it is not uncommon for students to spend a large part of their school time in more or less suitable provisional accommodation.
But in the long term, the authorities will not be able to avoid creating new school space. For many communities, especially smaller ones, this means a major financial effort. The mere indication that the loans are a necessary “investment in education” is no longer sufficient in view of the tight budgets to convince the voters of school building projects.
Voters say no
The municipal councils of Buchs (St. Gallen), Geuensee and Escholzmatt-Marbach (both Lucerne), Neuendorf (Solothurn) and Erstfeld (Uri) had to make this bitter experience. Voters everywhere have rejected loans for new school buildings in the last two years. The fear of a tax increase was often the decisive factor in the no. What remains is consternation and planning ruins: it usually takes seven years to realize a new school building. In addition, the authorities now have to work out a plan B and go back to the tedious search for temporary solutions.
But even if all political hurdles have been overcome, that does not mean that the inauguration can take place as planned. The delivery difficulties and surges in prices caused by the corona pandemic and the Ukraine war do not stop at school buildings. The start of construction for the renovation of a school building in the Zug municipality of Menzingen had to be postponed by eight months due to a massive increase in the price of raw materials. To ensure that the construction loan was not exceeded too much, the authorities looked for cheaper alternatives, for example in the building materials.
The educational institutions feel the shortage of skilled workers not only in the form of a lack of teaching staff, but also during the construction phase. The construction of the Birrwil school building in the canton of Aargau had to be halted at short notice in March 2021 because a capable foreman was missing after the specialist originally employed had injured himself.
In addition, suppliers are withdrawing from the school building business. The municipality of Reinach (Basel-Landschaft) had to look around for a new general contractor for its new Surbaum school complex. This was after the nationwide company Steiner AG decided at the beginning of 2021 to gradually withdraw from the total and general contractor business in German-speaking Switzerland, as media spokesman Andreas Gurtner explains.
Politicians call for long-term planning
These examples make it clear that there is a short-term response to the increasingly serious problems with the lack of classrooms. Wherever you look, provisional solutions are being thrown out of the ground or poorly thought-out new building projects are being launched. In the city of Basel, people have had enough of this plaster policy. In the Grand Council, politicians are putting pressure on the government from left to right.
In a joint initiative, the education and building commissions are demanding that the government council submit a plan for school premises within two years. This should guarantee that in the medium and long term there will be enough space for teaching in all forms. Switching to temporary buildings should only be permitted for conversion and refurbishment work and for a limited period of time.
In Basel, this approach is intended to prevent a similar situation from occurring as those responsible are currently experiencing in the city of Baden. There, the Burghalde school complex, which opened 14 months ago, has to be expanded after this short period of time. It has turned out that the premises created for around a thousand students and 130 teachers are not sufficient, as the “Aargauer Zeitung” reported. The city of Baden was doomed by the long planning horizon. When planning for the new school complex started in 2011, the growth in student numbers was underestimated. In addition, they did not want to create classrooms in advance.
Meanwhile, in Kerns in the canton of Obwalden, the current problems have to be solved. As the municipal councilor Diana Zumstein explains, the stopped school building project cannot simply be transferred to another architect. “Since this is a public project, we have to adhere to the rules of the bid law,” says Zumstein. So it will be a while before the children can move into the new school building.