The federal government will not be deterred by NSW legislation attempting to make it illegal for the performances of state schools to be made public, Education Minister Julia Gillard says.
The NSW opposition recently supported an upper house move in the state parliament preventing tables outlining the comparative performance of schools from being published in newspapers.
Under the proposed laws, media organisations face fines of up to $55,000 if they print information that ranks school performance.
Ms Gillard has previously called the new laws "ridiculous" because people would be able to gain access to the information regardless of the ban.
"There's nothing in the NSW law which will stop us from doing what we're committed to do, which is we are going to have a new era of school transparency," Ms Gillard told Network Ten on Sunday.
The NSW Liberal Party and its leader Barry O'Farrell were standing in the way of school transparency, she said.
"Well, what he's done won't stop the federal government making this information available," which it would certainly do, she said.
Ms Gillard also rejected criticism from News Ltd media reports that money from the government's $14.7 billion school upgrades program was being directed at the wrong projects and that some schools were missing out.
The government's process for assessing school projects was clear and there were "clear guidelines", she said, referring to funding given to schools based on a formula related to school size.
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