Keep Gonski funding scheme: Senate report

The Abbott government has been delivered a command exactly as it expected: keep the full funding scheme of the Gonski education reforms.

A Labor and Australian Greens-led Senate report recommends the government reintroduce the fifth and sixth years of the school funding reforms.

Budget changes mean funding for the outer years will instead be linked to the consumer price index.

Committee chairwoman Jacinta Collins warned that would be to the detriment of schools, students and the broader community.

"We will fail to realise the full potential of our human capital," the Labor senator told the upper house on Wednesday.

Greens Senator Penny Wright was more melancholic in her outlook, heralding an era of entrenched inequality if the government did not act.

"Every school is going to be worse off," she said.

The coalition rubbished those assumptions as offensive, arguing it was just as passionate about maintaining equitable access to education.

It would deliver the same funding model the opposition took to the last election.

"We believe in targeting funding, not just throwing buckets of money at it," Nationals Senator Bridget McKenzie said.