School closures highlight BER waste across NSW
- NEIL KEENE
- THE DAILY TELEGRAPH
- DECEMBER 25, 2014 10:00Pm
Monica Bolton and former school captain Catorina Philpott at Crowdy Head Public School. Picture Waide Maguire.
A FORMER government school infrastructure scheme is wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayer money, years after it came to an end.
The $16 billion Building the Education Revolution (BER) scheme — introduced by the Rudd government as part of its economic stimulus package — has long been derided for its costs and questionable benefits.
But the recent closure of several NSW public schools has highlighted just how wasteful the scheme remains.
The Department of Education and Communities said Crowdy Head Public School on the mid-north coast was one of eight public schools to close at the end of the 2014 school year.
Parents said they had known since early 2012 the site was earmarked for closure due to low enrolments.
But the former Labor government pressed ahead with a $345,000 new school library that opened in August, 2012. The school also won government funding in 2011 outside the BER scheme to build a new kitchen and garden. Fast forward to today and the near-new facilities are waiting to be dismantled, with whatever can be salvaged distributed to nearby schools.
It’s a similar situation at Wollombi Public School in the Hunter Valley, which controversially closed this year due to low enrolments.
Its historically low student numbers didn’t stop the federal government spending $250,000 on improvements as part of BER.
In fact, every school to close this year underwent costly improvements under the scheme, from new sports courts to canteen overhauls.
A Department of Education and Communities spokesman said the schools that had closed either had very few enrolments for 2015 or none, “with little prospect of student numbers increasing in the next few years”.
Monica Bolton, whose three children attended Crowdy Head Public School this year, said it was frustrating to see so much go to waste: “We have fought to keep the school but it has been taken out of our hands.”
