Education Minister Julie Edge has acknowledged that mobile classrooms are not a long-term solution, despite one at Willaston Primary School having been in place for more than 40 years.

Ms Edge said the double mobile classroom installation ‘predates’ the department’s records.

However, she explained that it is not currently used as a classroom, but rather for school group activities like yoga, music, design and technology and storage. Ms Edge said that the department had in 2019 planned to replace the structure with a new double mobile classroom, with planning permission having been in place.

‘However due to changing priorities the mobile classroom was installed on an alternative site as priority,’ she explained.

Ms Edge said that her department had met with the Department of Infrastructure ‘to establish what can be done to improve the condition of the mobile, to improve its external appearance and the internal environment in order to sustain its use by the school for a further period pending any agreement on replacement or new development at the school’.

Asked in Tynwald by Douglas North MHK John Wannenburgh whether its replacement would now be prioritised [after it missed out in 2019], Ms Edge replied that as the school still has a need for it, the priority is ‘to make sure it’s maintained to a standard that can be used’.

The minister acknowledged that it was ‘in poor condition’, and agreed that no more mobile classrooms should be added to island schools, as they were not a permanent solution.

She hinted at a ‘strategic review’ of the facilities at Willaston, and for other individual schools.

‘However we won’t be able to replace all mobiles overnight,’ she added.

Ballakermeen High School currently has ten mobile classrooms, with two new ones having been added in the past year.

Ms Edge said that this was ‘not appropriate’, and that catchment areas should be looked at [to prevent school overcrowding].

Mr Wannenburgh told the Manx Independent that when elected he had made a visit to the school, and upon seeing the ‘very poor’ condition of the classroom, promised to the head teacher that he would see if he could get it improved.

Describing it as ‘not adequate, damp and unheated’ he said that the mobile classroom represented a waste of resources because no actual teaching was taking place there currently.

Mr Wanneburgh said that if the existing facility were to be demolished, he would like to see it replaced with a multi-use structure, which could function as both a classroom and as a communal space.