Schools fall behind cost of repairs
GOLD Coast schools are confronted with a multi-million dollar backlog of repair work which cannot be fixed from the annual maintenance budget.
The funding crisis is exposing a divide within Coast public education which sees older campuses falling behind newer schools which do not need major repair works in the first three to five years of opening.
The Bulletin earlier this month provided photographic evidence of primary school children being forced to use toilets without doors and confronted with safety hazards due to a funding crisis impacting at the ageing Helensvale State School.
Education Minister Grace Grace in response to a Question On Notice has told Parliament the total value on an ongoing register of maintenance projects was more than $146 million across the State.
The South-East education district, which includes the Coast and Logan, has $15.5 million of repairs on the register.
Opposition education spokesman Jarrod Bleijie accused the Government of failing to deliver on its election promise of providing better schools for Coast children.
“The LNP reduced Labor’s school maintenance backlog but it’s now going back to the bad old days. This $15 million backlog could be well and truly cleared with the $40 million left over from the Commonwealth Games budget,” he said.
Theodore MP Mark Boothman said the one size fits all funding approach to our school maintenance was not catering for or addressing the needs of our older schools.
He believes a solution would be a maintenance bonus scheme where schools get to “bank” repair work payments in the early years after the campus was opened.
Ms Grace said Mr Bleijie had “a very short memory” because Labor on being elected to office was confronted with a long list of maintenance jobs valued at $214 million.
“Thanks to our regular, ongoing prioritisation of works, the maintenance program was sitting at $146 million as at 30 June 2018,” she said.
The Government had in the 2018-19 Budget committed $210 million for ongoing maintenance projects and state schools across the Coast area have been allocated more than $6 million for maintenance and minor works this financial year.