VANCOUVER - Replacing dilapidated playgrounds across British Columbia has become an expensive journey through a mass of red tape for parents and schools, and children in disadvantaged areas are losing out, critics say.

Education Minister Shirley Bond acknowledged there are deficiencies in her government's system that matches the money parent advisory councils raise for playground replacement and says there will be changes.

Critics have complained that families in less affluent areas lose out.

"The concern expressed in particular was that some schools are not able to raise matching funds and secondly some have no PACs (parent advisory councils),'' Bond told The Canadian Press.

"Those are issues that should generate concern and we agree with that.''

Many playgrounds across the province are in need of replacing for a variety of reasons, and new playgrounds are expensive.

Under the program administered by the province's gaming branch, schools can get their fundraising efforts matched dollar-for-dollar by the provincial government up to $20,000.

But those in less affluent areas are less able to raise the money and therefore, don't get the same amount in a matched grant.

For example, the parents at Kelowna's Pearson Road elementary school spent 18 months fundraising and put together under $15,000.

That includes a $5,000 donation from a local business and $1,500 from a service club.

Principal Susan MacNeil said many parents at the school are single and may not be as well off as parents in other schools.

"The whole project is $50,000, so even if we could get to $20,000 (plus matching funds) that wouldn't be enough,'' said MacNeil.

"It's not fair for the children. They are just as deserving as children in any school. It's not their doing that we can't raise enough money for them.''

The Pearson playground will be torn down this summer.

MacNeil said the school would have a bare bones playground with the $15,000.

Schools could also apply for a different, $1-million program made available in January that didn't require them to raise money before a grant was given.

That program is administered through the B.C. Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils.

But while the schools don't need to raise money, they need a parent advisory council.

Council president Kim Howland acknowledged that without a council at a school, they were out of luck.

"It was the process that was given to us and it was the process that we operated on knowing that there was $3 million that would also be offered through the gaming branch grants.''

A third program, called Let's Play, has been given $2.5 million to distribute for the building of accessible playgrounds across the province. It is administered by the Rick Hansen Foundation.

Bond said her government has made about $7 million in total available for playground replacement.

But she said the program that involved matching grants was "administered outside my ministry.

"We had no role in the selection of the playgrounds. It was done by the gaming branch.''

Bond said she has taken the concerns to the solicitor general's ministry, which is responsible for the branch, "to make sure that as we look at revising the criteria.''

There remains $2 million in the gaming branch grants funding that will be distributed under new criteria over the next two years.

"We recognize there are challenges in terms of equity of access and we're going to revise the criteria to try to address those concerns,'' said Bond.

David Cubberley, the Opposition NDP education critic, dismissed the funding scheme as a "botched process from the beginning'' that was unfair because it was "structured to screen out the most needy of schools.''

"To say you have to have matching funds in order to apply just loads the dice against those communities that are struggling the most.''

He suggested a more equitable system would be to use statistics that are available through the "developmental readiness index'' the ministry says it uses.

It measures where there are high levels of poverty are, the location of "developmentally disadvantaged communities'' and low graduation rates.

Cubberley noted a disproportionate number of grants went to schools in the Prince George area -- Bond's riding -- even though it has a much smaller proportion of the population.

"The schools in Prince George are among the needier schools in the province, I have no doubt,'' said Cubberley.

"But clearly they had a much greater knowledge (of available funding), whether that was through Shirley Bond's office, or the application process.''