A senior Turnbull minister has blasted Catholic schools for running a dishonest campaign against the federal government’s new school funding plans.

Christopher Pyne, formerly the education minister but who now looks after the defence industry portfolio, says he’s not had a single email, phone call, letter or visit from a constituent complaining about how the government plans to change funding arrangements for Catholic schools.

“I am quite disappointed in the Catholic education system nationally for running a campaign, using their parents’ money, that is dishonest and is trying to keep in place a system which is not fair to all Australians,” he told Sky News on Sunday.

While Mr Pyne may not have had any calls, the sector is mobilising its 100,000 staff and families of its 770,000 students in a large-scale campaign to let MPs know they’re unhappy with the funding plan.

The National Catholic Education Commission has warned MPs and senators should expect the phone calls and letters from parents and principals to continue rolling in en masse.

The government plans to pump an extra $18.6 billion into schools over the next decade and bring the commonwealth funding arrangements to a single national, consistent needs-basis.

Mr Pyne pointed out that plan will see Catholic schools getting an extra $1 billion over the next four years and average annual funding growth of 3.7 per cent over the decade.

“I don’t think the Catholics are going to get away with pretending that they’ve been dudded when they simply haven’t,” he said.

But in some areas the funding to Catholic schools is indeed going backwards – administrators in the ACT, for example, say their schools will cop a 1.8 per cent cut over the next decade.

Mr Pyne suspected the Catholic education administration was more concerned about transparency measures in the new system that would allow parents to know exactly where commonwealth money should be going.

The sector had a special arrangement for some time to be able to distribute money on its own terms, he said.

“What we’ve seen … is that some schools that should have got more money from the federal government were getting less and that was being reallocated by the Catholic system to inner city schools and elite schools,” Mr Pyne said.

“Now Catholic parents might be happy to do that … but at least that should be transparent and people should know.”

Labor frontbencher Brendan O’Connor said his party was more inclined to believe Catholic schools over the government’s assertions when it came to funding.

“This is a big divide now between the government and the Catholic education office and the government needs to reconcile some of these concerns, particularly when it’s contrary to the needs-based support,” he told Sky News.