In a submission to the federal government's Review to Achieve Educational Excellence in Australian Schools, the ACT has acknowledged that emphasis should be placed on local teaching reforms to "realise maximum impact".

However, the submission continued: "The ACT would support further national quality teaching reforms to: (i) reduce the diversity and number of initial teacher education courses and institutions in Australia and (ii) further enrich the selection processes into teacher education and (iii) increase the consistency and quality of initial teacher education programs."

An Education Directorate spokesman said the submission had been inspired by international models, where "the highest performing education systems in the world have far fewer education courses and institutions but of a higher quality with less variation".

He emphasised the government's strong relationship with the University of Canberra and the Australian Catholic University.

"There are currently many teacher education courses across the country, and while these courses must be accredited to operate, the variability of these courses is high across different regional and metropolitan areas of Australia," the spokesman said.

The push was welcomed by the Australian Education Union's ACT branch, with secretary Glenn Fowler pointing to teacher drop-out rates as evidence standards should be lifted. That didn't mean teachers in the system weren't up to scratch, he said.

"We've been arguing for a long time there is a range of measures that need to occur to enhance the status of the profession," Mr Fowler said.

The federal government has introduced a raft of teaching reforms since 2015, including re-accrediting initial teacher education courses in line with new national standards, making compulsory a literacy and numeracy test for new teachers and widening selection processes for education undergraduates.

Education Minister Simon Birmingham said: "I'm looking forward to the report from David Gonski and his panel of education and policy experts and to discussions with my state and territory colleagues about the panel's recommendations."

University of Canberra dean of education Geoffrey Riordan said he supported the government's views "about the importance of quality teaching, improved teacher education programs and the need to raise the status of teaching".

The Review to Achieve Educational Excellence in Australian Schools was announced mid-last year. The panel, led by Mr Gonski, was commissioned to make recommendations on how school funding should be used to improve school performance and student outcomes. It will report to the federal government next month.

The ACT's submission also called for a formal review of the impact of NAPLAN. The territory, traditionally the best-performing jurisdiction in the national standardised test, has attracted some scrutiny in the past two years as results lag and gaps widen between rich and poor students.

"This should include unintended consequences of school level comparisons, such as contributing to residualised populations, which then results in further unfavourable comparison," its submission said.

Senator Birmingham said states and territories could make their case to the Education Council but said parents wanted more data on school and student performance, not less.

"Opponents of accountability should cease running scare campaigns against NAPLAN and realise that if they just treated it as regular part of a child's assessment then much of the excessive attention it currently gets would simply vanish," he said.

"NAPLAN is being constantly reviewed and refined and there's already been a number of studies and reports on NAPLAN as well as two parliamentary committee inquiries.

"The focus of the Commonwealth, states and territories is on how delivering NAPLAN Online will provide faster results and tests that adapt to how students' are performing. NAPLAN Online will provide an even clearer picture of how students are tracking in their learning to help parents and schools support them."

The ACT government's submission likely took inspiration from Education Minister Yvette Berry's fact-finding mission to examine Finland and Singapore's high-performing education systems last year.