Schoolyard collapse 'metaphor for BER' BUILDING SCHEME

A $1.2 million steel shade structure funded under the federal government's $16 billion school building program collapsed.

The collapsed outdoor covered learning area at Kooringal Public School in Wagga Wagga, NSW, which buckled during construction on Tuesday. Picture: Frank Perri

A $1.2 million steel shade structure funded under the federal government's $16 billion school building program collapsed.

The accident happened while it was being erected in the playground of a NSW public school just before the final bell of the day.

The steel structure of the covered outdoor learning area, or COLA, became unstable while it was being erected at the Kooringal Public School AT Wagga Wagga in southern NSW on Tuesday afternoon. Kooringal received $2.5m under the Building the Education Revolution program to build the 20m by 30m COLA and refurbish the school's library.

Parent Janelle Myers was waiting with her son Ian for her nine-year-old daughter Samantha to finish school when she heard two loud bangs.

"I looked up and saw the whole structure was in the process of collapsing," she said yesterday.

"It's definitely not something I expected to see, particularly when you have a construction company that is supposed to know what they're doing, since that's what they do for a living."

Ms Myers said parents had been given little information about the incident, with the school and builders waiting for the outcome of an investigation into the collapse of the steel frame, and advice on its safe removal.

The Coalition's spokesman on education, Christopher Pyne, said the COLA at Kooringal Public School was a metaphor for the problems in the BER program.

"The collapse of the COLA mirrors Julia Gillard's collapse in confidence for the program, otherwise how can we explain her omission of the school hall program from her list of achievements in the debate on Sunday night and the National Press Club speech two weeks ago?" he said.

A spokesman for WorkCover said yesterday initial inquiries indicated the structure became unstable during construction before collapsing, and a thorough inquiry by the authority's investigations unit was now under way.

The spokesman said engineers would inspect the site to help determine the cause of the collapse.

The managing contractor for the project, Laing O'Rourke, said the company had notified WorkCover immediately of the incident, and inspectors had visited the site to interview the workers.

Laing O'Rourke spokeswoman Susan Crawford said a full engineers' report was being compiled, and further information was being sought from the builders engaged to construct the COLA, and she would not comment on whether the fault was in the steel structure or the erection of the frame.

The director-general of the NSW Education Department, Michael Coutts-Trotter, has defended the higher cost of BER projects built by the state government compared with similar projects in Catholic and independent schools by saying the government builds to a higher standard.

Following a series of reports in The Australian highlighting the concerns of schools that they were not receiving value for their BER money, NSW Education Minister Verity Firth cancelled a $1m COLA at Hastings Public School on the north coast.