$850,000 paid for school's `big shed' worth $156,000

Parents have not-so affectionately dubbed it the "big shed" that cost $850,000.

Anne Fay at Skipton Primary School’s new building, where the kitchen is smaller than the disabled toilet. Picture: David Gerarty

Parents have not-so affectionately dubbed it the "big shed" that cost $850,000.

The kitchen isn't big enough to fit a stove and the original design failed to include stairs from a doorway a metre off the ground.

At Skipton Primary School, just past Ballarat in Victoria's north-west, they are no fans of Julia Gillard's Building the Education Revolution program.

The school council -- who submitted their concerns to the Victorian Parliamentary inquiry into the implementation of the BER -- believe they have not got value for money for their "multipurpose building" for which they received $850,000 of BER money.

"Our shed is about 13 squares. If you asked an insurance broker to replace it, they said it would cost $12,000 a square. That would be a maximum of $156,000," said parent Anne Fay, who has a child in grade six at the school.

"It's so hard as a community to raise money so to see the government waste so much money is really annoying," she said.

Ms Fay said there were problems with the BER implementation process from the beginning, including significant delays in construction, which was supposed to start last July but only started on the weekend.

"When we started it was quite a big shed but it keeps getting smaller and smaller as the plans are redrawn," she said. "So now the disabled toilet is bigger than the kitchen and there is no room to put the stove."

Ms Fay said the stove has now been slated to be in the store room and stairs on a doorway that "drops eight feet" to the ground had been included after they were left out of original plans.

According to the Victorian education department's website, Skipton's "multipurpose building" average template cost was $655,000 from an federal government allocation of $850,000.

"We are farmers out here," Ms Fay told The Australian.

"If we ran our business like the government ran the BER, we would not be here."

She said the school would have ensured a better outcome if they had been given the money from the beginning. "We could have done it for $180,000," Ms Fay said. "Obviously the government has not thought this whole program through properly."

Federal Education Minister Simon Crean said he was worried about the issues facing the school.

"I am concerned about these reports about Skipton Primary," he said. "I am informed Skipton Primary has not made a formal complaint to the Implementation Taskforce. I would encourage the school to do so as a first step to resolving this issue."

ADDITIONAL REPORTING: PATRICIA KARVELAS