A coalition government will let Labor's Gonski-based funding system stand for a year if it can't get legislation repealing it through parliament.
Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has written to school principals across the country explaining he has "deep reservations" over the government's new Better Schools funding model.
He said a coalition government would use the year to figure out how to "get the model right" as leaders in Western Australia and the Northern Territory continued to criticise the $15 billion plan.
WA Premier Colin Barnett emerged from a one-hour meeting with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on Friday without a breakthrough and said the legislation was "inadequate".
He has consistently said the state would not become part of the program until concerns about control were addressed, claiming other states had been "bullied" into it.
Mr Rudd dismissed Mr Barnett's concerns as "nonsense" as he urged WA to sign up.
NT Chief Minister Adam Giles announced he had rejected the plan, which he said was "con".
He said the federal government continued to release misleading calculations based on false assumptions about how much funding Territory schools currently received.
Victoria was expected to sign up on Friday after Premier Denis Napthine revealed on Wednesday he was willing to be flexible.
But no agreement was announced.
In the letter to school principals, Mr Abbott and opposition education spokesman Christopher Pyne said if there was no national agreement on school funding in place if the coalition was elected, they would move to delay the start of the proposed model by one year.
"If Labor and the Greens use the parliament to stop our plan to delay the new model, the coalition will allow it to operate for one year (until 2015) while we work out how to get the model right," the letter states.
Though previously they have been inconsistent on the conditions under which they would keep the plan.
Mr Abbott has said all jurisdictions would have to sign up, while Mr Pyne said it needed an overwhelming majority.
But the commitment has been slammed as cruel and worthless by the union representing Australia's public school teachers.
Australian Education Union federal president Angelo Gavrielatos says the coalition's continually shifting position makes the latest commitment worthless.
"Let's be clear what this letter actually means - at best it merely delays the massive funding cuts of ripping up Gonski to 2015 instead of 2014," he said on Friday.
"What a cruel thing it would be for additional Gonski funding to flow to schools for just one year, before being ripped away from students."
So far only NSW, the ACT, South Australia and Tasmania have signed up to the $15 billion better schools plan.
Independent and Catholic schools have also endorsed it.
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