Erica Stanford: Education Minister on the new Government package set to give schools more funding

There's more funding for schools to do jobs like painting and fixing gutters as part of a $413-million-dollar package in accelerated Government investment.

Education Minister Erica Stanford says the funding will enable more maintenance to be done these summer holidays.

She says $58 million of new money will be available to schools as of now.

"Every single school up and down the country is going to be getting a 50 percent top up on their school property maintenance grant." 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Government's trying to get the cash out the door quickly.
This is to help the trades keep their jobs. Their
accelerating funding as part of a four hundred million dollar
fund to fix up and maintain old multi classrooms which
we know need to be fixed. This comes after, of course,
we had a one point eight percent drop in construction
quarter to a ten percent drop over the last year.
Education minist Minister Erica Stamford is with me, Minister, good evening, Hello, Hi,

(00:24):
very well, thank you. Why accelerate this funding now? Why
not six twelve months ago when the trades really needed it.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Well, we were already doing a huge amount. This is accelerated,
but if you look at the amount of classrooms were
built over the last year, it's thirty percent more than
the year before, last year, on the year before that,
This year we're going to build more than we did
the year before that. And I've got eight hundred million
dollars of stuff in the pipeline between now and Christmas.
So we were already doing a huge amount of heavy

(00:52):
lifting in education. And the reason we're able to do
that is because we got our act together. Because you
remember I turned up and it was an absolute, unmitigated disaster,
hundreds of projects unfunded. Basically, we've got to get act together.
We've got the property report done, We're building classrooms at
half the price. We've accelerated the number of classrooms we're building.
This is just the next step because we're in the
position to be able to do it.

Speaker 1 (01:12):
Okay, you're saying money, now, how much money just for
our tradees listening? How much money is going to be
available this side of Christmas that wasn't going to be
available before this announcement.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
Well, there's fifty eight million dollars of new money which
is going to be going out the door very quickly.
So school, every single school up and down the country
is going to be getting a fifty percent top up
on the school property maintenance grant.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
So from when school now.

Speaker 2 (01:38):
Now it'll be available now. Schools usually will do it
over the school holidays, so we're going out to every school.
They'll know now they'll be getting a form that says
what are you going to do with it? Because we're
going to track it, which we haven't done in the past,
but under this government we will What are you going
to do with it? When you're going to do it?
And get We're going to get money out of the door.
So this is for things like painting and washing and
gutters and minor fix up and roofing and bits and pieces,

(02:03):
but it is significant. There'll be some schools he'll be
getting one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The small schools
will be getting well more than a fifty fifty percent
up tech. They'll be getting a minimum of five thousand.
So for a very small school, you know, with just
you know, a handful of students, they'll be getting more
than that fifty percent.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
All right, Minister, appreciate your time tonight, Erica Stamford, Education Minister.
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