David Gonski, the architect of the new funding model for schools, has criticised the Federal Government for taking money from universities.

At the weekend the Government announced plans to increase school funding by $14.5 billion over six years, saying it would scrap $2 billion from university funding to pay for the reforms.

Mr Gonski, who heads up one of the nation's major universities, is not happy with where the money is coming from.

"As chairman of the review of school funding, set up by the Federal Government, my fellow panellists and I were not asked to consider how our final recommendations should be funded," he said.

"As chancellor of a leading Australian university, the University of NSW, I fervently believe in and will continue to advocate that increases be made in funding the university sector, to ensure Australia is able to provide quality teaching and research in its universities."

The vice-chancellors of Australia's 39 universities have all painted bleak pictures of the impacts from the cuts.

2014 School funding formula $9,271 per primary school student + loading

$9,271 per primary school student + loading $12,193 per secondary school student + loading Loading basis for students: Low socio-economic background

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But one academic specialising in the economics of education says the money may well be better spent on schools.

Dr Chandra Shah from Monash University says the scale and impact of the cutbacks on tertiary institutions has been overstated.

Dr Shah says the Government is right to look at how much it is spending to support university students.

"The headline figure quoted is always $2.8 billion when the real figure that should be looked at is the $900 million," he said.

Dr Shah says that $900 million accounts for the efficiency dividends demanded from universities, of 2 per cent next year and 1.25 per cent in 2015.

He says the other measures, including removing the 10 per cent discount for paying university fees upfront, make sense, and even the direct cuts will provide money that may do more good in the school sector.

"It's not going to suddenly stop universities from operating, and it is over two years and then it reverts back," he said.

"Generally there is higher pay-off into spending money into good quality primary and secondary education, and then you have set up a good base for further education for those students."

Political fight

Despite the controversy, Prime Minister Julia Gillard says she will get her school funding plan through Parliament before the election.

Gonski funding Extra funding Total public investment 2014-19 NSW $5 billion $87 billion VIC $4 billion $68 billion QLD $3.8 billion $65 billion WA $300 million $38 billion SA $600 million $21 billion TAS $400 million $7 billion ACT $100 million $5 billion NT $300 million $5 billion Catholic schools $1.4 billion $50 billion Independent schools $1 billion $35 billion Funding is based on a formula of a base amount per student plus "loadings" that are given when certain criteria are met.

She has given the states and territories until the end of June to say whether they will sign up to the deal.

Ms Gillard says she is keen to do electoral battle on education and is willing to negotiate with any premier and chief minister who is interested.

"Every state is going to see more money for schools in that state, on the basis that we're putting in $2 for every $1 coming from states. So everybody gets more money," she said.

"I am putting the highest value on the education of our children. So I will keep fighting for it.

"We will be there on Friday looking for states to sign up, we will keep fighting through to June 30 to get states on board, and I will keep campaigning on this plan because it's right for our nation."

New South Wales and Victoria, who would get the lion's share of the extra money, are not objecting.

Premier Barry O'Farrell expects to be able to say yes or no to the proposal at the COAG (Council of Australian Governments) meeting this Friday.

But Western Australia and Queensland remain thorns in the Government's side.

WA Premier Colin Barnett says as things stand, he will not be signing up to the Prime Minister's plan.

He says it is not worth the extra $300 million his state would get over the next six years, labelling the extra money "a disgrace".

"We are being offered the same amount of money as the Northern Territory, which has about one-tenth of our population. And then you look at the billions of dollars that Julia Gillard wants to pour into the east coast."

'All or nothing'

But Opposition education spokesman Christopher Pyne says if the Coalition wins the election in September and not all states and territories have signed up, all bets are off.

"If the Gillard Government can't get all the states and territories to sign up at COAG on Friday, her school funding model is dead in the water," he said.

"Education is not like health; we've never operated that way. We've always had a nationally consistent model and we will not have different states operating under different models.

"So no state should sign up thinking that they will have that agreement honoured if the other states do not. I mean, sorry, it's all in or none in."

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Watch Duration: 8 minutes 9 seconds 8 m Peter Garrett accuses Opposition of wanting to stick to a broken funding model

School Education Minister Peter Garrett is accusing the Opposition of wanting to stick to a broken funding model.

"Well today's admission by the shadow education spokesman bells the cat on the Coalition's policy to not go ahead with providing support for states to the tune of $14.5 billion," he said.

"Now he either doesn't understand the model or he's gone to Joe Hockey and said that he's contradicting what the Coalition has on its record in terms of cuts to school education."

The Opposition is yet to say how it will vote on Labor's school funding legislation.

Neither will it say how it plans to vote on the Government's planned cuts to higher education that are being used to bolster funding to schools.

The Coalition has accused Labor of penalising and handicapping universities who perform to world standards, making them foot the bill for "a wave of election-driven cash to throw at schools".

But that is as far as it goes. Mr Pyne will not elaborate.

"We haven't made any announcements of any cuts. The only party that has announced any cuts to university funding is the Labor Party, which has announced $2.8 billion on Saturday," he said.

"You'll see our full fiscal policy during the election campaign at the appropriate time."