The Government has announced $56.6 million to fix condition issues and replace 52 teaching spaces across six schools, with work due to begin in the next six months.

Education Minister Erica Stanford and Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop said the package is part of the school property spend in Budgets 2024 and 2025, and focuses on “warm, safe, fit-for-purpose” facilities.

The six projects are:

• Kerikeri High School (Northland): 12 replacement classrooms
• Pinehill School, Browns Bay (Auckland): 3 replacement classrooms
• Hutt Intermediate (Wellington): 14 replacement classrooms
• Natone Park School (Wellington): 7 replacement classrooms and an administration space
• Ashburton Intermediate (Canterbury): 8 replacement classrooms
• Maruawai College (Southland): 8 replacement specialist classrooms

On the Government’s numbers, the package averages about $1.09m per teaching space, though scopes differ and include an administration area and specialist rooms.

Bishop said the Government has increased maintenance funding for schools by $880m across Budgets 2024 and 2025, and is standardising delivery to cut costs and timeframes by using offsite manufactured builds and repeatable designs. He said 583 classrooms were delivered last year, 31 percent more than in 2023.

The ministers framed today’s funding as clearing a backlog of promised but unfunded or delayed projects, and said the changes mean “more classrooms, delivered faster.”

Project-by-project budgets, completion dates and details on how each school will manage construction on site were not provided. The Government said work on all six sites is expected to begin within six months.