Economy kick-start projects still languishing

UP to 40 school stimulus projects will not meet the $16.2 billion Building the Education Revolution's final extended deadline.

UP to 40 school stimulus projects will not be completed in time to meet the $16.2 billion Building the Education Revolution's final extended deadline, 1 1/2 years after they were supposed to be finished to kick-start the flagging economy.

A parliamentary hearing was yesterday told there was still $199 million unspent or committed to projects under the scheme and 158 primary schools left without finished buildings.

This included 12 projects in round one of the Primary Schools for the 21st Century program, supposed to be completed by December 2010, 44 in round two, originally due in January last year and 102 in round three, due to have been completed by March last year.

The $16.2bn stimulus program, launched by then prime minister Kevin Rudd in the middle of the global financial crisis, was found to have failed to deliver value for money in NSW and Victoria.

Department of Education BER branch manager Stewart Thomas told a Senate estimates hearing yesterday that as many as 40 projects of the 158 remaining unfinished projects might not be completed by the final extended deadline.

"I would expect that would be a number that would go beyond June 30," he said.

Mr Thomas said 10,451 school projects under the P21 program and all the buildings under the Science and Language Learning Centres program had been completed.

He said so far $15.5bn had been spent on the P21 scheme, $225m was under contract and there remained a further $199m either unspent or uncommitted.

The committee also heard that the government had given a $3m grant to University of NSW academic Sidney Newton to develop a cost analysis model using the BER data, as recommended by the Orgill inquiry.

But department officials told the Senate committee Dr Newton would not be looking for ways the BER could have been improved.

The brief was instead to maintain and add to the building costs database developed during the Orgill inquiry, as this could be used as a reference for future building projects.

"It is about helping inform future construction activity that government at different levels in education or even conceivably in other sectors might undertake," deputy secretary Michael Manthorpe said.

Officials also told the Senate committee that they had not yet developed the school funding modelling for the Gonski reforms, despite School Education Minister Peter Garrett's plan to introduce legislation by the end of the year.

"It is a work in progress," said department secretary Lisa Paul. "We don't have results to offer at this point."

Ms Paul also conceded that there was "considerable" work to be done on the new funding modelling for Mr Garrett to meet his year-end deadline.

Liberal senator Brett Mason said he could not believe that the department could not yet provide any results from its modelling.

"It is quite astounding that the government is trying to bring in a new funding system for Australia's 10,000 schools but it does not know how it will impact various school systems or individual schools," Senator Mason said.