Shorten slams 'knuckle dragger' MPs

Federal Labor leader Bill Shorten has labelled a group of coalition MPs "knuckle draggers" who are trying to inflict their outdated views on schools.

Mr Shorten was responding to the group's call to axe federal funding for a controversial anti-bullying schools program or suspend it pending a parliamentary inquiry.

"Why not let the schools, the teachers, the parents and kids work out their education rather than a group of ideologues ... trying to impose a 1950s view of the world," he told reporters in Canberra on Thursday.