Cramped facilities fail kids

BENOWA High is an excellent example of many things, with good teachers and great kids being front of mind.

But as we report today, it is also right up there in terms of having to squeeze students into demountable buildings – 19 such buildings in fact – which the Queensland Teachers Union rightly says is justification for another permanent teaching block.

Parents, past students and residents in the local community have been well aware for many years that the school has had to make do with demountables.

Benowa has been just the tip of an iceberg though in inadequate schools infrastructure, with many other schools in the region having to run classes in temporary classrooms that turn into sweatboxes at the height of summer.

Sometimes attitudes have not helped schools receive what they should. Older residents might have complained that they had to put up with oversized classes and lack of airconditioning, as though that has been justification for kids now having to cop it sweet.

That sort of argument just doesn’t hold in our modern, hi-tech world. Standards demanded in education, an ability to excel in the digital world, competition for jobs, and, in fact, our nation’s prosperity – life is too demanding for schoolchildren to have to put up with the inadequacies of the past.

Permanent classrooms and airconditioning are not difficult concepts and are not beyond society’s ability to pay, especially since they are important investments in the future; that is, what politicians are often fond of describing as our most important resource, our children.

Education Minister Kate Jones should take that on board.

But shortfalls in school facilities mirror a much wider problem.

Successive governments have failed miserably in ensuring infrastructure is ahead of demand (indeed, has it ever been?), even though their own data has shown where the growth areas are.

The M1 is an obvious example of state and federal governments lagging in their responsibilities – by years.

Lack of funding for policing was highlighted only this week when it became apparent officers assigned to police beats in the suburbs were being used to plug staffing holes in other parts of the police region.

Queensland Rail has been frantically plugging holes in its suburban train driver rosters this past week since the shock revelation it would have to cut 100 services because of a massive shortage of drivers brought on by the opening of the new Redcliffe line.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk threatened heads would roll, and two did – those of QR’s CEO Helen Gluer and board chairman Michael Klug, but not the head of the man in the seat where the buck would otherwise stop, Transport Minister Stirling Hinchliffe.

Infrastructure, staffing and budgeting are matters of planning, but governments struggle with that. Heads should roll.