Parents have got hot and heavy over the lack of air-conditioning in portable classrooms at Gordon Primary School, near Canberra, in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT). A resolution calling for "appropriate heating and cooling" for portables in ACT schools passed through the state's assembly last week. The president of the ACT Council of Parents and Citizens' Associations, Dr Ian Morgan, said basic heating and cooling for classrooms should be seen as part of the establishment costs of a school, not luxuries that schools could fund themselves.

The education department had a duty to provide a functioning school, which included live-able classrooms, not ones that left children with nose bleeds and splitting headaches, he said.