The Coalition's pre-election promise to match Labor's Gonski schools funding has been misunderstood by some people, Prime Minister Tony Abbott said on Sunday.



Mr Abbott insisted that Education Minister Christopher Pyne had pledged that 'schools' as a whole would get the same amount of money under the new government.



That was despite being played a clip during the election campaign in which Mr Pyne said: ''You can vote Liberal or Labor and you will get exactly the same amount of funding for your school''.



Mr Abbott told Channel Ten's Andrew Bolt: ''I think Christopher said 'schools would get the same amount of money'. And schools, plural, will get the same amount of money. The quantum will be the same.''



Pressed on the apparent clear-cut promise to individual schools, Mr Abbott suggested there was confusion in the community.



''We are going to keep the promise that we made – not the promise that some people thought that we made, or the promise that some people might have liked us to make. We are going to keep the promise that we actually made,'' he said.



Mr Pyne sparked a backlash from state education ministers and parents last week when he announced that a new funding formula would be introduced in 2015 but the Coalition would maintain the same ''funding envelope'' over the three years to 2018.



Opposition education spokeswoman Kate Ellis dismissed Mr Abbott's ''clever words''.

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''A promise is a promise,'' she said. ''They were very specific in their words before the election ... a promise they have now walked away from.''



Ms Ellis said teachers and parents across Australia have a right to be angry about the government's decision and didn't rule out backing

industrial action.



''I would certainly support ... us fighting to make sure these huge and important reforms are not tossed aside,'' she said.



Opposition Senate leader Penny Wong said the government was ''determined to break its word'' to trash the Labor government education legacy.



''This is a government obsessed with blaming the Labor Party, rather than a government focused on governing the nation and you saw that in the way in which Christopher Pyne approached this issue,'' she said.