ACT Education Minister Andrew Barr said Mr Rudd's suggestion he might withdraw $42 billion in federal funds unless states and territories agreed to improve the quality of teaching, make school reporting transparent and lift achievement in disadvantaged schools was ''reminiscent of the threats under past Coalition governments''.

Mr Barr said the ACT would agree with most of the reforms, but league tables were problematic.

''... while we agree on the need for more transparent reporting in theory, it is how it is actually going to be carried out that is our big concern,'' Mr Barr said.

Queensland Education Minister Rod Welford supported the call for states to report the performance of their schools, but wanted to see more detail of the plan, not wanting the reporting to be as simple as a league table of schools.

Mr Welford said, ''The question is how do you measure performance of schools or for that matter the quality of teaching performance of teachers? We need to ensure the measures are valid.''

Australian Education Union president Angelo Gavrielatos expressed anger at Mr Rudd's address yesterday, saying, ''I'm disappointed, because the expectations that Prime Minister Rudd created himself was for something different and something bold and some vision. It would appear there are a lot of Coalition policies in there.''

He said league tables would be disastrous for Australia.

''You cannot reduce the performance or the achievement of a single child or the performance or the achievement of a single school into a single figure; these are simplistic notions that have no place in the world of education,'' Mr Gavrielatos said.

He believed the most important thing the Commonwealth could do was lift its investment in public education.

A new report estimated it needed $1.5 billion to make up for funding shortfalls under the Coalition. If Labor failed to make up the difference, the union warned it would lead to a real cut in funding for public schools by 2011 which could see the loss of 1000 teaching positions across the country.

But the NSW Government backed Mr Rudd's plan for a national performance reporting system.

Acting Education Minister John Hatzistergos said, ''Our schools already do most of what the Commonwealth is suggesting.

''NSW introduced clear A-to-E report cards and we were the first state to introduce basic skills testing with comprehensive reports on the results.''

Australian Council of State School Organisations president Jenny Branch said Mr Rudd's greatest failing was not to consult with parents before formulating the plan.

''We don't support any league tables, we've seen what they can do in the UK, we've seen cases of parents fighting with each other, buying addresses, raffle tickets so you can get in the line to get into a school that's higher up the league table,'' she said.