The federation’s New England organiser, Susan Armstead, said four invitations had been sent to Mr Joyce’s office in the past few months, and the date of Tuesday, May 17, had been changed to accommodate Mr Joyce’s parliamentary schedule.

Ms Armstead said Mr Joyce should be in attendance to defend his government’s decision “to see $28 million in Gonski funding lost to New England’s most needy students”, but his office maintains he must honour a long-standing appointment on the same evening as the forum.

“However, he is committed to be at three open forums in Tamworth on the 21st of May, and Inverell and Armidale on dates yet to be specified,” the spokesman said.

“There are sure to be other forums yet to be organised that he will be attending.”

Ms Armstead said five of the 10 poorest postcodes in NSW were in the New England – based on Australian Tax Office data – and Mr Joyce had some explaining to do to residents in those areas.

“Mr Joyce, (who said) before the 2013 election, ‘I believe without a shadow of a doubt we will continue to commit to Gonski past the first term’, must be held accountable to the parents and students in those postcodes who will now lose critical needs-based funding,” she said.

Education remains one of the big policy differences between the two major parties in the run-up to the July 2 election, with Labor committing to the final two years of the Gonski funding agreements with the states – at a cost of $4.5 billion – something the Coalition has refused to do.

Instead, the Coalition is promising to pump an extra $1.2 billion into the nation’s schools, between 2018 and 2020, by increasing the rate of spending growth from 2.5 per cent to 3.56 per cent a year.

Ms Armstead said tomorrow’s community forum at the Tamworth Services Club would be an opportunity to find out just what New England candidates stood for when it came to education funding, with the event due to start at 6pm.