Education Minister Erica Stanford said the coalition Government inherited a school property system "bordering on crisis".
Three-hundred and fifty school building projects are under review after the new Government says it discovered major cost blow outs.
The Government made the announcement on Monday, saying the new inquiry will investigate and address problems with the school property system.
It will cover the system where the "scope of property works planned was unrealistic and unaffordable".
Stanford said cost overruns were running at inappropriate levels on some school projects.
“There have been a number of cost escalations and some schools expecting exciting, bespoke building projects that are not able to be delivered on," she said.
“Within weeks of forming a Government, the Ministry of Education had already paused 20 building projects and informed me that there could be up to 350 projects in various stages, from design through to pre-construction, where expectations far exceeded what could delivered."
'Nothing happens fast'
Speaking to Breakfast this morning Mike Newell, principal of James Hargest College in Invercargill, said his school was still "playing the waiting game".
"For us, it's been close to seven or eight years for this process to get the go ahead but the planning of the first building took two years, so nothing happens fast."
Newell said a lot of classrooms at his school were "pretty tired" with rotten wood and leaky ceilings.
"There's a lot of things that don't make sense in terms of what you try to do to a building to keep it worthy.
"You end up chasing your tail a wee bit, some of the repairs just don't work because the water keeps going through so you keep patching bits up. We've just spent about $200,000 on roofing, on buildings that are going to be pulled down and the bill will be about $400,000 on paint.
"We're putting paint on buildings that have got to come down at some stage — so, to us, it doesn't make sense."
Asked about the politics of the situation, Newell said: "You can't blame the last government, this isn't one government, it's over successive governments, schools got their new buildings but they were leaky, in some respects Labour tried to get more stuff done but maybe they bit off more than they could afford."
Labour: Just an excuse
When the announcement was made earlier this week, Labour responded by calling the move a "desperate attempt" by the new Government to cut school building projects.
Hipkins said the cost escalations were not unexpected and claimed the Government was looking for an "excuse" to get out of classroom upgrades.
"The school upgrades announced by our government were made on Ministry of Education advice and were based on condition assessments," he said.
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