The Federal Government should heed the warning that its education policies will do long-term damage to the prospects of thousands of students, writes Angelo Gavrielatos.

Just hours before the release of last week's budget, Tony Abbott said: "We want to get money out of short-term consumption spending and into long-term investment spending, because that's what's going to build up our country for the long-term."

His decision to effectively abandon the needs-based Gonski funding system for schools shows he does not believe investing in our children's education, and creating the human capital our nation needs to compete in the 21st century, has any long-term importance.

Clearly neither does Jennifer Buckingham, who dismisses these funding cuts as somehow not real, because they occur after the four-years of forward estimates in the budget.

For schools who are already using the Gonski money to help the most vulnerable students, through speech therapy or literacy programs, the fact that this money will not be extended is a cut. They have got an idea of the difference this money can make, but now face the prospect of it being taken away.

Try telling a child with disability in Year 1 that the support they will get in Years 5 and 6 is somehow irrelevant because it falls beyond the budget forward estimates.

Buckingham is correct to say that schools funding will increase over the next four years, but only slightly, and only because an unwilling government was forced to honour the first four years of the Gonski agreements which it tried to abandon as soon as it took office.

But after that there is no commitment to the last two years of the Gonski agreements, and instead a decision has been made to index schools funding to the CPI, a figure that is below the annual increase in the real costs of educating students and which will hit every school in Australia.

The Prime Minister has turned his back on equity in education at the first opportunity, choosing to entrench disadvantage and deny opportunities to thousands of students.

Last night David Gonski, chair of the Gonski Review, warned of the consequences of continuing with a funding system that ignores the needs of students. He spoke of underfunded public schools falling further behind, and the growing gaps in achievement.

The Gonski review was the most detailed, thorough and non-partisan review of education funding in Australian history. Its findings have been broadly accepted by everyone in the education sector. When David Gonski speaks, the government should heed the warning that its policies will do long-term damage to the prospects of thousands of students.

Lifting overall student performance and closing the achievement gaps between advantaged and disadvantaged students will not be possible without the full implementation of the Gonski school funding reforms.

By abandoning the 5th and 6th years of the Gonski education reforms, which contain two-thirds of the extra funding, he has ripped billions of dollars out of schools and ended funding based on the needs of students. NSW alone will lose $1.2 billion of funding.

For children who attend poorly resourced schools, this decision will be disastrous. Existing gaps in achievement will keep growing and more and more children will fall behind. Up to 20 per cent of schools will not meet minimum resource standards.

Angelo Gavrielatos is the federal president of the Australian Education Union. View his full profile here.