In a ground-breaking development, Ms Gillard is expected to announce that Labor supports the principles underpinning the Gonski review; namely, that the current funding model was failing the nation's students and that every school should receive a base funding amount, with extra funding on top of that to address key areas of disadvantage.

The landmark Gonski review of schools funding - the most comprehensive review of Australia's school funding arrangements in almost 40 years - recommended the government pour an additional $5 billion a year into the education sector.

But the education sector is not expecting Ms Gillard to commit to a dollar figure, because this could place the federal government at a disadvantage in negotiations with the states and territories about the share they will be expected to pay.

Australian Education Union federal president Angelo Gavrielatos said the expected announcement was momentous.

''We are hoping and indeed expecting that the government will embrace the Gonski funding principal of base funding and additional loadings to address issues of disadvantage, which can only deliver additional resourcing for public schools.''

The Gonski review panel, led by businessman and academic David Gonski, was instructed to report in line with the government's commitment that no school would lose a dollar of funding under the new arrangement.

But the panel found that the current funding system was failing the needs of students, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds.

''There is also an unacceptable link between low levels of achievement and educational disadvantage, particularly among students from low socio-economic and indigenous backgrounds,'' the report found.

This had reached the point where there was a five-and-a-half year gap between the performance of the most advantaged and the least advantaged children by year 9.

Government schools educate a higher proportion of Australia's disadvantaged, disabled and Aboriginal children than private and Catholic schools.

In 2010, 36 per cent of all government school students were from the lowest quarter of socio-economic advantage compared to 21 per cent of Catholic school students and 13 per cent of independent school students.

In the same year, 78 per cent of children with a disability attended government schools.

The panel recommended the government should ''make reducing educational disadvantage a high priority in a new funding model''.

To deliver that, the Gonski panel recommended the government make a $5 billion investment in Australia's government and non-government schools.

However, that figure was based on 2009 estimates, meaning the cost in real terms would be significantly higher today.

Since the report's release the government has been negotiating with the states, territories and other ''stakeholders''.

Illustrating the challenges of introducing new funding arrangements was the fact that there has not been a nationally agreed definition of disability.

In June, an Auspoll survey conducted for the AEU found that 88 per cent of Australians believed there was ''an urgent need'' to increase public school funding.

Independent Schools Council of Australia executive director Bill Daniels and National Catholic Education Commission chairwoman Therese Temby were not available for comment.