Education Bill passes the Senate

LABOR'S multi-billion dollar schools funding plan has passed the Senate, but not without sparking widespread objections from the opposition.

The Senate debate on the Australian Education Bill was limited to 165 minutes, drawing repeated complaints from coalition and independent speakers, who said the government was rushing through the reform.

"This is an insult to the Senate and it is an insult to taxpayers who the government wants to saddle with a (multi) billion bill for its reforms," Liberal Brett Mason told the upper house on Wednesday.

Schools Minister Peter Garrett observed from the Senate's public gallery as the bill passed without amendment.

However, it wasn't all smooth sailing for the government legislation.

"I'm not convinced, sadly, that this bill has figured out how to do it but I hope this legislation can be used as a building block to achieve the reforms every Australian child deserves," independent Senator Nick Xenophon said.

Liberal Chris Back asked how a reformed funding model that hands greater power to the commonwealth could benefit regional schools.

"Where would decisions be best made for the Turkey Creek School in the Kimberley? ... Not here from Canberra," he said.

Labor senator Louise Pratt championed the funding reforms and said they were urgently needed to reverse "rampant inequity" in the standing system.

"We cannot let this current broken system continue," she told the chamber.

"It is doing a great disservice to the nation's students ... and leaves hundreds of thousands of young Australians behind."

NSW, South Australia and the ACT are the only jurisdictions to have signed up to the plan, which offers public and private schools $14.5 billion in commonwealth and state funding over six years from 2014.

Mr Garrett said he was confident more states would sign up to the funding plan ahead of the the June 30 deadline.

The Australian Education Bill 2013 and associated Australian Education (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2013 now progress for royal assent.

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