A new grants fund for school playgrounds and library upgrades has been dismissed as all but meaningless to the needs of Australian students.
Little detail is available so far on the new $30 million local school community fund included in Tuesday night's budget.
Education Minister Dan Tehan says every electorate will receive $200,000 "to support priority projects in local schools that benefit students and their communities".
But pressed on who would decide which projects had priority - the minister, bureaucrats, local MPs or someone else - a spokesman for the minister said only that it was a discretionary fund and details would be announced in due course.
The teachers' union says the grants in no way make up for capital works cash having been rolled into regular federal funding of public schools.
It is quite insulting to suggest the $30 million would close any infrastructure gaps, Australian Education Union federal president Correna Haythorpe says.
"This provision basically means it's about $3164 per school and about $7.77 per child - which won't even pay for a textbook in the library," she told AAP.
"The treasurer's completely out of touch if he thinks that $3000 per school is going to make any significant difference for our libraries and play equipment."
The money is more likely to be spent on only a couple of schools in each seat.
The number of schools in each electorate ranges between 26 in Fadden, on the Gold Coast, and 181 in Durack, which covers about two-thirds of WA. The typical seat contains about 55 schools.
A new school playground costs between $60,000 and $100,000 - and mostly at the upper end of that range - equipment supply companies have told AAP.
Labor's education spokeswoman Tanya Plibersek reiterated the opposition's promise every single school would be better off if her party won government at the imminent federal election.
A similar program for environmental projects, which gives $150,000 to each local member to hand out, has come under fire this week after one Liberal MP claimed he and the environment minister had awarded four grants in March, despite the program not being open to applications until mid-year.
