Union upset over Pyne 'giving a Gonski'

The Australian Education Union wants to send minister Christopher Pyne to the naughty corner for co-opting their "I give a Gonski" slogan.

The union travelled the country getting parents, teachers and politicians to "give a Gonski" during its campaign for needs-based school funding over the past two years.

Now it says Mr Pyne is compounding the hurt he inflicted on public schools in dumping Labor's planned funding by using their slogan to promote his overhaul of higher education.

"To see Mr Pyne mockingly waving an `I give a Gonski' placard in parliament today was an insult to the hundreds of thousands of students," AEU federal president Angelo Gavrielatos said on Thursday.

"He showed his true colours by standing up in parliament and effectively laughing at the prospect of these schools being stripped of funding."

Mr Pyne seized on comments from University of NSW chancellor David Gonski - the architect of the previous Labor government's school funding system - that plans for universities would improve Australian higher education.

"Dare I say it, I give a Gonski," he told parliament on Wednesday.

He followed that up on Thursday by waving one of the union's signs, altered to read "I want my local MP to give a Gonski on higher education".