(Transcript from World News Australia Radio)
State and territory education ministers have met with their federal counterpart Christopher Pyne to discuss the future of schools beyond 2014.
They say they've come away with more questions than answers, and they're particularly concerned about public school funding.
New South Wales education minister Andrew Piccoli has described the meeting with federal Education Minister Christopher Pyne as passionate and heated.
And, as Thea Cowie reports, Mr Piccoli says the meeting has thrown up new concerns.
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"The Commonwealth has implied that if there is a reduction in funding for states that have signed up that indeed that reduction may well only come out of public schools. That is of enormous concern to all jurisdictions."
The Australian Education Union is outraged by what it's calling an "unconscionable plan" to rip money out of public schools.
The union's Federal President, Angelo Gavrielatos, says for the first time in decades public schools were looking forward to extra funding, targeted to student need.
Tasmania's Labor education minister Nick McKim says the revelation is explosive.
"This is a bombshell revelation that will rock the public education system in Australia to its core. We had peace and he has lobbed a stick of dynamite into what was a very tranquil pool and now we are back at risk of ongoing uncertainty and ongoing division between government and non-government sectors in this country."
The federal Coalition's decision to scrap Labor's education model has seen state and territory ministers of all political persuasions band together in majority support for a needs-based funding system, in line with recommendations from the Gonski review.
Most state and territory ministers also agree that deals already signed between Labor and the states should be honoured, and that states that didn't sign should receive funding - but not at the expense of others.
But Education Minister Christopher Pyne looks unlikely to budge.
"Putting aside all the posturing and all the rhetoric the fact remains the same: I'm the national education minister. There needs to be a national model that is fair to all the states and territories and that is equitable to students and that is what we'll achieve. And I am keeping all the promises that we made before the election."
Mr Pyne rejects suggestions the government is about to break an election promise that no school would be worse off under the Coalition.
In fact, he says, the states that didn't agree to Gonski-based changes will get 230 million dollars more in 2014 than they would have under Labor.
The Coalition says it will only honour one year of the four-year funding agreements negotiated by Labor.
Mr Pyne plans to sit down with state ministers and develop a new model in early 2014, to be implemented in the 2015 school year.
He says he believes there were no binding agreements with most of the states or the independent and Catholic school sectors.
But South Australia's education minister Jennifer Rankine is furious.
"Minister Pyne has said there would be the same envelope of funding but every day we find out that somebody else gets to put their fingers in this envelope of funding. It's like receiving a birthday card from your grandmother with $20 in it but you have to share it first of all with your brother or sister and then you find out your cousins are getting dibs (first pick) on your birthday money as well."
Joining the calls for the new government to stick with Labor's school funding reform is a new group calling itself the "Need to Succeed Alliance".
The alliance includes Ken Boston and Kathryn Greiner, both members of the review panel which produced the Gonski report which underpins Labor's funding reforms.
The alliance has written an open letter to Mr Pyne saying the current socio-economic status funding model is no longer working and Australian students risk being left behind.
Earlier this week Mr Pyne said the federal Coalition would keep that model as the basis for its new plan, but he has since said the nation has moved beyond that.
The funding model negotiated by Labor has a per capita base funding for all schools and loadings for categories of disadvantage.
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