Kevin wonders where the money wented
As part of the stimulus package our area school at Orroroo gets some $800,000. Yahoo Buckeroo!
That’s OK, BUT! Here’s the builder that you’ve been allocated (let’s call him XYZ Constructions).
Comms begin:
Right lets get down to see what we’ll get for that sorta munney.
Well we’d like, “blah, blah, blah”.
The Rub
Sorry, no way, can’t do it.
Well, what can we have?
Oh you might get 4 classrooms, after we remove the old couple there.
So, 4 classrooms with a wet area in each, building on-site will be too expensive ‘cos of living away stuff so we’ll transport an’ plop down there, easy peasy.
I scratches me head, I does…
Now is it just me or does 4 big rooms in one building with a wet area in each room and probably a transportable plonk-down seem like a fairly simple construction project.
So, I jump on the Weeks and Macklin Homes website, www.weeksmacklinhomes.com.au/homes.php
Funny, the housing displayed here seems normal. A nice 3 or 4 bedroom house for between $90K and $130K say.
Scroll down to “The Washington”…. from $151,000.
Wow, the plans show a kitchen, 2 bathrooms, laundry and FIVE bedrooms, lounge, family and a carport. Must be built out of hessian, that’s gotta be it!
Well, there must be a reason that we can’t use local builders, that we can’t tender these jobs out, that someone’s management fee is so exorbitant.
Bloody hell, you can get 2 substantial homes in Clare each on a large block for that much money.
When next you hear a minister say, “We spent a million bucks on you whingers our taxpayers!“, do your sums and ask, “Why’d we only get $300 grands worth?”
Talk about the bush getting the short end of the stick. They don’t even care that it’s so obvious….
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
kevin wonders where the money “wented”!!! ??? you mean “gone!”
Merry Christmas Adeel!
Well actually it was a [subconcious?] dig at educational standards. There seems to be a great hulla balloo about testing of kids to provide great statistics, to then bandy around in the media. That’s the thing with statistics, they can hide a multitude of sins, and are often so remote from many people’s reality that they are just ignored.
Kids with genuine issues are slipstreamed and curriculum dumbed-down for them. Schools have very little say in staffing, good teachers become disgruntled and bad principals wreak hovoc (thank God for the good ones!)
Change comes slowly with bureaucratic behemoths, the painful part is that, in a rural school, change may not happen until a child passes through two or three year levels, often under the same teacher. (Fantastic when you have a great teacher, otherwise…)
That’s why I wonder where the money went(ed). What’s the priority here and who is answerable to whom?
Interesting reading.
Excellence or Exit, ensuring Anangu futures through education, Charles Darwin University’s report to the South Australian Department of Family and Community Services. July 2008
Excerpts from the Excellence or Exit report