Labor billions failed students, Coalition says

THE Coalition says fresh benchmarking of students shows Labor failed the nation's children despite spending billions on education.

Christopher Pyne and Tony Abbott defend the Government's stand on school funding.

THE Coalition says fresh international benchmarking of students shows Labor failed the nation's children despite pouring billions into education.

But the opposition has blamed the Howard government for the worsening international rankings, saying they government must now fully implementation of the Gonski school funding reforms.

Tests of 15-year-olds for the Program for International Student Assessment reveal Australian teenagers have fallen further behind their international peers in reading, maths and science, now ranking behind students in Vietnam, Poland and Estonia.

Education Minister Christopher Pyne seized on the OECD test results, saying Labor had scored an "F" on its education report card.

He said the slide in student performance had occurred as Labor had lifted real education spending by 10 per cent.

"There are the worst PISA results since PISA began in 2000. They are demonstrably worse than anything that ever occurred under the Coalition government," Mr Pyne said.

"They are a serious wake-up call for the Australian education system. But more importantly, they tell us one fundamental thing - money is not the answer in education."

Mr Pyne said the survey results endorsed the Coalition's focus on teacher quality and school autonomy.

But he said the Coalition would deliver Labor's promised Gonski funding because it had promised to do so.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten said Australian children had been let down by a "longtime broken education system".

He said the results showed the Howard government's socio-economic status model of school funding was broken.

Mr Shorten said the Coalition must now implement the Gonski reforms in full by holding the states to their spending commitments and extending its four year commitment match Labor's six year funding promise.

"It's time to stop the politics. It's time to get on board and make sure we have an education system which is not betraying the future capacities of our young children," he said.