A protest at Mount Panorama on Friday, attended by an alliance of teachers, parents and school principals, was organised to “send a clear message to [Malcolm] Turnbull about education funding” under Gonski 2.0.

Earlier this month, the Australian Government announced $1,909,200 in funding for Bathurst’s 26 independent, catholic and public schools next year, but NSW Teachers Federation (NSWTF) deputy president Gary Zadkovich said funding has actually been cut.

He said the $1.9 million actually represents a significant cut compared to what schools were expecting under the original Gonski agreement signed by the Gillard Government in 2013.

Under the original Gonski, Denison College’s Bathurst and Kelso campuses would have received $2,285,445 for 2018 and 2019, but Gonski 2.0 has dropped that by $1,693,368 to just $592,077.

Kelso Public School would have received $798,126 for the two-year period, but this has been decreased by $710,062 to just $88,064.

Mr Zadkovich said $23m in funding has been taken from the Calare electorate “because the Turnbull government is tearing up the Gonski plan”.

NSWTF country organiser Kelly Anderson said Bathurst’s schools had already started planning what they would do with the funding, and it will be the students who lose out.

“Schools have already budgeted for resources and programs,” she said. “Schools will have to make determinations about which kids can get access to the resources and that’s just not fair.”

While it may have been a Labor federal government that signed the original Gonski agreement, Mr Zadkovich said the Abbott and now Turnbull governments were obligated to continue it.

“It’s not an agreement signed by political parties, it’s signed by the Commonwealth of Australia,” he said.

“Surely that’s sending the wrong message to the community and our students [to cut funding].

“We’ll never get funding certainty, we’ll live in a three year funding cycle.”

Ms Anderson has urged the community to get involved.

“The next step is to continue to campaign and continue to push the federal government to make changes to go back to the original agreement which is what we’ve been continually campaigning about,” she said.

“Let your local federal MP about how important it is for the kids of the region to have that funding.”

The Gonski 2.0 protest has been on a tour this week which started in Sydney before moving on to Wollongong, Nowra, Goulburn, Canberra, Cowra, Orange and Bathurst.