The two sessions meet in the middle of the day. At twenty past twelve, one thousand and forty children leave and six hundred arrive, in the same gate, in the same thirty minutes, and for years they did it in the open yard.
In the wet season that handover was miserable and occasionally dangerous: a yard of wet tiles, two crowds moving in opposite directions, and parents with younger children in the middle of it.
The roof covers the central yard, about forty metres by twenty five, with drainage into two tanks that now supply the washrooms. The handover was also restructured at the same time, with the arriving session held in the covered area until the departing one has cleared the gate, and staff on both sides of it.
What else it produced, none of which was the reason for building it. An assembly space that works in the rain, which the school had never had. Somewhere for the forty children who wait after the afternoon session to be, with a member of staff, until six. A place where the morning clubs for the lower grades can be held. And a hall that is no longer booked for every wet morning, which freed it for examinations.
The rainwater into the washroom tanks was an addition made after the association pointed out, correctly, that a forty metre roof in this climate was collecting a great deal of water and pouring it into a drain.
