Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Women's Issues) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for his question. The Investing in Our Schools Program was introduced to meet the failure of state governments to properly invest in their schools. The original commitment was $1 billion. There are 10,000 schools in Australia. The program was competitive and panels were set up in each state to assess the applications because we anticipated that there would be more applications than there was funding available, and that certainly has been the case. Over 18,000 applications were received from schools across Australia. The original guidelines made it clear that schools could apply for up to $150,000. That is not a guarantee.

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