The fundamental flaw in the Morrison government's school funding announcement is its purpose. It is designed to solve a political problem of the Liberals' own making, not to address the policy challenges of our education system, and what this means for Australia.

There are really two questions that need to be asked when it comes to supporting Australia's schools: are we giving every child the chance to fulfil their potential, and are we securing sound foundations for the country's economic future.

Asked, and answered.

That is the focus of Federal Labor's approach to schools. Under Bill Shorten and Tanya Plibersek, we are absolutely committed to restoring the original Gonski vision for Australian schooling - that is, to securing an enduring compact through which all of our kids, in all of our schools, in all of our states and territories get all the support they need to succeed to the best of their abilities.

Getting everyone to the Schooling Resource Standard, the level of funding support necessary for a decent education, is our concern. And it can't wait.

While there has been considerable attention paid to Australia's relative decline on a number of measures of international performance, I'm more concerned about the gaps within Australia.

The point of schools funding isn't the money, of course: it is what that enables, or doesn’t. Too many kids haven't been getting the individual support they need, and this is showing.

Our highest achieving students are continuing to do really well, as well as anywhere else, in fact, but those in the lowest decile have fallen too far behind. This group is far from evenly distributed around our nation: children in socio-economically disadvantaged communities are over represented, as is regional and remote Australia. This isn’t good enough – it’s a shocking and appalling waste.

It is important to consider choice and affordability when it comes to schools. I don't take the Prime Minister, or Minister Tehan, to task for this. But this has to be applied to ensuring that every parent in Australia believes that the choice of sending their child to the local public school is one that they can afford.

The Liberals have scant regard for this principle. Universal, secular, public education can't be residual, or allowed to be seen to be.

Labor supports families who choose for their own reasons to attend faith-based and other independent schools. Our position on this has been clear for quite some time and, unlike the conservatives, we've put our money where our mouth is. We have consistently supported an approach to funding schools that is sector-blind as well as needs-based.

But Labor is the party of public education. We recognise that this system is where the large majority of Australian schoolchildren are educated - and a larger majority of those who have a disability, or are from First Nations or culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.

We are passionately committed to the 2.5 million kids in our state schools, and will always fight for them.

This is unfortunately not a bipartisan commitment – though it should be.

How absurd, and how offensive, for the Prime Minister to have cancelled COAG as his government tries to profoundly reshape how our schools are to be funded. Of course we need a national approach to supporting our schools and this has to be cooperative, not imposed from Canberra. No wonder Premiers from both sides of politics have rejected this approach already.

When it comes to ideas about improving our performance in schooling, the Liberal cupboard is pretty bare. It's back to the future, for the most part - with the most recent meeting of education ministers going to a framework from five years ago. And the recommendations of Gonski 2.0 (whatever their status might be under the new minister) requiring real needs-based funding to implement.

Under Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison and Ministers Pyne, Birmingham and Tehan Australian school children have experienced five wasted years. The unity ticket on schools funding has been torn up, twice, and replaced with a series of nasty culture wars and a gaping financial hole impacting the learning of 70% of our students.

This is a recipe for a less prosperous and more unequal future.

So, let's get back to basics - a concept normally embraced by Tories when it comes to schooling!

Now is the time for a focus on what really matters: our commitment to the future of every individual Australian, and to Australia. Fundamental to both is education. Starting with the vital foundation of universal, high-quality early years, then world-class schooling before a transition to trading or university to complete a preparation for a world of work, and a world, that is so rapidly changing.

Our national government's role in schools isn't about managing sectoral interests. It's about safeguarding our future. There's no reason why our ambitions for Australia's greatest resource, our young people, should be confined. Every one of them deserves every chance to do great things and to live good lives.

Dan Tehan, you have to try harder.