Ms Gallagher is still negotiating the ACT's education funding with the Commonwealth - which has made a lump-sum $100 million commitment to the territory. Prime Minister Julia Gillard wants to sign off on the package by the end of next month.

But Ms Gallagher warned that parents and students needed to understand the rate of growth in funding would be slower in the ACT than in the states and other territories and that national reform was too important to risk to jurisdictional fighting.

Tuesday's budget is expected to contain the financial roll-out of the Gonski reforms, which will set a school resourcing standard, or base amount for each student across the nation of $9271 for primary students and $12,193 for secondary students.

Loadings on top of that will be based on whether a student came from a low socioeconomic background, had a disability, was indigenous, spoke English as a second language and whether the school was small or remote.

All loadings would be publicly funded in all schools, while the base amount in non-government schools would be discounted by parents' capacity to pay their school fees.

Ms Gallagher has told the Legislative Assembly the ACT faced different circumstances to almost all other states and territories.

''The vast majority of our schools already reach the school resourcing standard that other jurisdictions are being asked to fund their system to. So in terms of financial benefit for the territory, were we to sign the Gonski-related reforms, it would not involve large increases of education funding coming from the Commonwealth - quite different from what we have seen being signed and delivered in New South Wales,'' she said.

''One of the other strange outcomes of this is that those jurisdictions, Western Australia and the ACT in this instance, that have prioritised education funding in their budget and have brought their schools up to a resourcing standard that is very good … in a sense will not be benefiting from the flow of Commonwealth dollars because there is no requirement for the Commonwealth to bring our students up to that level of resourcing.''

Ms Gallagher said she was trying to manage expectations in light of the greater national need. ''I'd really like to think that we value the education opportunities of a child in the Northern Territory, or far north Queensland, just as much as we value Canberra children,'' she said.

''I hope we can think of the big picture and in fact we should be celebrating the fact our kids already enjoy a system the other states may take six years to reach.''

For the 70 per cent of ACT schools that met or exceeded the national standard, it was likely they would receive a 3 per cent rate of indexation, compared to a 3.6 per cent rate for schools below the national standard.

Negotiations are continuing on requirements for the ACT to implement the range of national school improvement initiatives that revolve around quality teaching and learning, empowering school leadership, meeting student needs and bringing transparency back into information on school performance.

Ms Gallagher said there was ''still a bit of work to go with the Commonwealth''.