Christopher Pyne slammed in school funding war

THE states yesterday accused Christopher Pyne of singling out government schools to bear the brunt of any expenditure cuts.

Education Minister Christopher Pyne has come under fire after announcing the Abbott Government would renege on a key election...

THE funding war between public and private schools was reignited yesterday after the states accused Education Minister Christopher Pyne of singling out government schools to bear the brunt of any expenditure cuts.

Education ministers emerged split from their first meeting with Mr Pyne in Sydney, with an unlikely alliance of Labor, Liberal, Nationals and Greens ministers saying school-funding arrangements were in "chaos".

They were then accused of acting "like babies", crying over old arguments.

While Mr Pyne said no state should assume it would lose money under arrangements to take effect from 2015, state ministers said he had told them inside the meeting that funding levels for non-government schools were set in legislation. With only $1.83 billion now available for schools over the next four years, instead of the $2.8bn allocated by Labor, council chairman and NSW Education Minister Adrian Piccoli said the implication was that the smaller funding pool would have to be shared among all states and territories, including those that had not signed deals with the former government.

Mr Piccoli said school-funding arrangements were more uncertain, with Mr Pyne also walking away from election promises to honour four-year deals and match Labor's funding "for every single school, dollar for dollar".

"The commonwealth has implied if there's a reduction in funding for states that signed up, that reduction will only come out of public schools," Mr Piccoli said.

But Mr Pyne insisted the government was keeping its election commitment of matching Labor's funding envelope, which was cut to $1.6bn after it failed to make deals with three states.

He said the Coalition had in fact increased it by $230 million to provide extra money for Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory.

"We said we would fund schools in exactly the same way as Labor would, match them dollar for dollar, and whatever a school would have received in 2014 under the Labor Party it is exactly the same what they would have got under the Coalition on one proviso -- Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia would get more money," Mr Pyne said.

West Australian Education Minister Peter Collier said he appreciated the disappointment of the states that had signed deals, but his state had been penalised under Labor's model because it funded its schools at a much higher level than any other state. He firmly believed the federal government's decision to recommence funding negotiations was "an eminently sensible one".

Queensland Education Minister John-Paul Langbroek said the signatory states were behaving "like babies" and living in the past, trying to prosecute old arguments when Tony Abbott and Mr Pyne had made their position clear during the campaign.

Mr Piccoli said the funding agreement signed in NSW based on the Gonski plan had ended 20-30 years of war between private and public schools over funding but six months of peace was ended by the federal actions.