Prime Minister Julia Gillard during her press conference to address matters related to her time at law firm Slater and Gordon at Parliament House last month.
Julia Gillard will today vow to make Australian students competitive on the international stage as she unveils a cash splash for schools.
The ambitious pledge will ensure schools become a signature policy in Labor's re-election campaign.
Appearing at the National Press Club to present the government's response to the Gonski review of funding, the Prime Minister will announce plans to scrap the current funding system for public and private schools.
However the full implementation of the long-awaited reforms will be delayed until 2020 to ease the hit to the budget.
Looking even further ahead, the Prime Minister will call on the nation to aim high and repair falling standards.
''By 2025, I want Australians schools to be back in the top five schooling systems in the world,'' she will say in the landmark speech.
''That means we have 13 years - the same period of time that it usually takes a student to complete schooling - to make Australia among the best in the world.''
The Prime Minister will propose enshrining the nation's educational aspirations in new legislation.
''The Australian Education Act will erect our nation's support for a child's education as one of the entitlements of citizenship,'' she will say.
''It will state our great aspirations for school education reform.''
Ms Gillard will not accept all the recommendations of the Gonski review - the most comprehensive study of Australia's school funding arrangements in almost 40 years - which recommended an extra $5 billion be spent on the education sector, and an overhaul of the funding model for public and private schools.
Money will be allocated on a flat, per student basis from 2014 when the current school funding agreement expires.
Extra funding will be given to address key areas of disadvantage.
''It is a model that strips away all the old debates about private versus public and puts children at the centre of the funding system,'' the Prime Minister will say.
''Today, unless kids from the poorest quarter are brilliant, they are getting below average results in reading. And once they are behind, far too many of them stay there.
''By year nine, the average child from the same battling family is three years behind classmates from the most well-off quarter of Australian homes.
''I see the faces of these kids in the school across the road from where I live in Altona. We shouldn't be letting them down.
''We are failing our indigenous children - there are about 32,600 indigenous school children in remote Australia.
''By year nine, the average indigenous child in very remote Australia is reading below the level of a year three child in the city.''
The wait for more cash is far from over and the Coalition is critical of Labor's decision to phase in the new funding model over six years from 2014.
Opposition education spokesman Christopher Pyne said the extra funding was three elections away.
''This promise is all foam and no beer,'' he said.
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.
The government has promised that no school would lose money and all schools would get an increase in funding.
Last month Ms Gillard said all independent schools would receive a funding boost however it is expected public schools would receive the majority of funding as they teach more students than private schools. The Gonski review found that the current funding system was failing the needs of students, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Government schools educate a higher proportion of disadvantaged, disabled and Aboriginal children than private and Catholic schools.