Government embarrassed by further Computers in Schools blow-out

11/05/11

Labor’s budget contains another cost blow-out in the Computers in Schools programme, bringing the total blow-out to over $1.4 billion and the total cost of the programme to $2.4 billion, said Christopher Pyne, Shadow Minister for Education today.  

“Originally this policy was meant to provide a computer for every student in year nine to year twelve for $1 billion,” Mr Pyne said.

“Labor’s policy was originally costed on the assumption that each computer would be $1000, and there were 1,000,000 students entitled to receive one.

“Over a three year period we saw state government revolts, bungled deliveries, computers in boxes for months, parents being charged additional costs and of course waste and mismanagement.

“Just last week Julia Gillard admitted that the Government had delivered 413,000 computers out of the 1,000,000 promised, and the Prime Minister claimed the programme was on schedule.

“In fact, the computers in schools programme that is supposed to achieve a 1:1 ratio by December 2011 must now provide around 600,000 computers in six months, more than the Government has managed to deliver in three and a half years.

“Coupled with this new blow-out, the Computers in Schools programme remains another Labor Education debacle and another example of waste and mismanagement in education,” Mr Pyne said.