Marnie Coates has been campaigning for a new high school in her area for years.
She lives at Medowie, in NSW's Hunter region, and her daughter Ryah started Year 7 last week.
However, the 12-year-old, like hundreds of other local students, must travel by bus 15 kilometres away to Raymond Terrace in order to get an education.
It's one of two high schools children in Medowie are zoned for — both are over capacity.
It's a similar story around the state: an ABC analysis has found hundreds of schools overflowing with students.
The issue looms as critical for communities like Medowie ahead of next month's NSW election.
"The plan there by the current government is to expand those schools rather than provide the infrastructure where it's needed, which is in our community," Ms Coates said.
A NSW auditor-general's 2021 report found new school announcements were focused on election commitments, not campuses prioritised by School Infrastructure NSW — the education department arm responsible for building new facilities.
The ABC has analysed where funding for new and upgraded schools has been spent by electorate, based on the 2022-23 budget papers, which includes projects dating to 2014.
It showed 75 per cent of funding went to electorates in Greater Sydney, though the seat of Monaro — which was held by former-longtime Nationals MP John Barilaro until his resignation in 2021 — was awarded $333 million in new schools funding, the second highest in the state.
Ryde, in Sydney's north-west, held by the Liberals, topped spending with $347 million.
The map below shows spending on new and ongoing school infrastructure projects for all state electorates.
The map below shows school infrastructure spending for Sydney electorates.
New school spending is concentrated in electorates like Riverstone and Macquarie Fields, in Sydney's booming north west and south west, respectively.
In the Port Stephens electorate where Medowie is located, about $12.6 million was allocated to upgrading the Hunter River and Irrawang High schools.
Labor has, so far, committed to building 10 new schools if elected in March, including a high school in Medowie.
Labor holds the seat by 6 per cent.
The Coalition has so far promised new schools for Jordan Springs, in the seat of Londonderry, which a spokesperson for Education Minister Sarah Mitchell said was an election commitment, and Westmead, which is part of the government's current school building program.
The ABC's spending analysis showed 67 per cent of funding for new or ongoing school infrastructure projects was in the seats held by the Coalition.
Ryde ($347 million), Monaro ($333 million) and Willoughby ($254 million) were the top three electorates for spending, all held by the Coalition, followed by the Labor-held electorate of Macquarie Fields ($242 million) and Sydney ($203 million), held by independent Alex Greenwich.
The Coalition holds seats in some of the state's fastest-growing areas, where many schools are over capacity and students are taught in swathes of demountable classrooms.
These include Riverstone (4,985 students over-capacity), Castle Hill (3,848 students) and Epping (3,537 students) in Sydney's north-west, and Camden (2,746) in the south-west.
The latest NSW education department data showed 5,110 demountables were being used as teaching spaces in the state's schools, including 81 at The Ponds High School and 52 at Riverbank Public School, both in the Riverstone electorate.
More than 600 NSW schools were over-capacity in 2021.
A spokesperson for School Infrastructure NSW said that, as of May 2022, all the recommendations in the auditor-general's report had been addressed.
"As a recent parliamentary inquiry reflected, School Infrastructure NSW has developed systems to ensure that allocation of funding is based on student needs, and that decision-making is transparent and evidence-based," they said.
Ms Mitchell said the government had a track record in building school infrastructure targeted at growing communities.
“Families right across NSW can see the benefits in their local schools as a result of our commitment to investment in their community," she said.
Natalie Walker, president of the Federation of Parents and Citizen's Associations of NSW, said her organisation would welcome more safeguards to ensure all capital works in schools were planned and prioritised according to community need.
"It shouldn't be political at all, you know. It's a responsibility of our government of the day," she said.
The population in the Medowie area is forecast to grow by 40 per cent (or, more than 20,000 people) in the next 20 years, according to government planning projections.
The site for a new high school, which the state government has owned since 1985, remains vacant.
The government has committed $8.6 billion in school infrastructure funding in the next four years, on top of the $9.1 billion it has spent since 2017.
It will need to educate an additional 180,000 students in government schools by 2039, according to the 2021 NSW auditor-general's report.
Ms Walker said she would like to see limits on the number of demountables and the length of time they are in schools.
Ms Coates said that while the schools in Raymond Terrace were "fantastic", Medowie had the population to support its own high school.
"It's not about the schools. It's that the Medowie kids, and there's a thousand kids being bussed out of here every day to go to high school, they're losing their sense of community when they go off to high school," she said.
She said time spent travelling by bus to school impacts on the student's extra-curricular activities.
"They're having to drop drop off sport and have a hard time getting part-time jobs because of that travel time that they're doing each day," she said.
