Just 5km away, another school will get two classrooms, two toilets and a glorified roof over a netball court for its $3 million government gift.

The difference? St Agnes Parish will oversee the work at St Joseph’s Primary School.

A private, government-appointed company is in charge of the contentious building work at Hastings Public School.

The value-for-money disparity has sparked outrage nationwide, but especially among students’ parents at the government-run school.

School Council representative Kylie Sherwood said more should have been done with the money.

“If we were able to manage the $3 million, we would be able to do a lot more with it using local contractors,” Mrs Sherwood said.

“We just want to see some value-for-money.”

The covered netball court is, in fact, called a Covered Outdoor Learning Area (COLA).

The school’s Parents & Citizens’ Association paid for a COLA – a 504m2 steel structure that cost $78,000 to build – at the Waniora Parkway school seven years ago.

The planned 2010 version – size 655.5m2 – will cost $954,271.

Each institution was granted the money under the federal government Building the Education Revolution scheme’s Primary Schools for the 21st Century program.

The Reed Group is responsible for the program in the New England and north coast, including the Hastings Public School project.

The Sydney-based firm, one of seven managing contractors for the program in NSW, would not comment about the Hastings Primary School’s two new additions.

The NSW Department of Education and Training’s Integrated Program Office, which is responsible for work under the program across the state, approved construction costs at Hastings Public.

Port Macquarie’s St Joseph’s Primary School received the same amount under the same scheme for its works.

When spent, the $3 million grant will have paid for the conversion of the school’s old library site in to a modern, state-of-the-art information technology centre and library, and the hall.