A new South Australia state government report has revealed more than a third of public school buildings are out-of-date. The Education Minister says the government has a plan to tackle the building backlog with some schools already earmarked to receive millions of dollars’ worth of upgrades.
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00:00Morning roll call with the Education Minister.
00:05Are you excited for Tuesday morning?
00:07Yeah.
00:08You look really enthused.
00:09To unveil a new 20-year school infrastructure plan.
00:13The way kids learn has changed and our schools need the change to reflect that.
00:17The plan shows the government has failed to keep pace
00:20with the need to maintain and replace buildings
00:23across SA's public school system.
00:26It states 35% of school buildings are past their so-called design life
00:31with an average age of 44 years.
00:34What we understand about learning spaces now
00:37compared to what we understood back in 2012 or last century
00:41is that they need to be designed differently
00:43to what some of the schools still have.
00:45We are giving schools a bit of transparency and clarity
00:48around the decisions we are making
00:50and the criteria we are using to choose where taxpayer money goes
00:54and to what schools.
00:55Oak Bank School is one place with classrooms in need of repair.
00:59It's received $15.9 million from the state government
01:03to help it attract more students.
01:06The school is getting tired.
01:07It needs that infrastructure upgrade to really bring us into the future.
01:12The opposition is questioning other future infrastructure spends.
01:15It wants to know how much water bills could rise
01:18to fund works for new housing developments.
01:21The budget has come and passed
01:23yet we haven't seen any clear indication
01:25that funding has been included in the budget for these purposes.
01:29What we're doing now is playing absolute catch-up footy
01:33on what is a billion dollar problem of water and sewer infrastructure
01:37to new housing developments on the urban fringe.
01:41A final call on water bills will be made within weeks
01:44while the government is set to detail more water infrastructure plans
01:48later this month.