teachers and schools represent only a part of the solution.
Ian D,

They're not part of the solution, they're a large portion of the problem.

Atman,

Finland does not pay teachers “about 30k a year”.

Finnish teachers generally speaking are paid a little less than Australia’s when they start teaching and more when they reach the top of the scale, considerably more in the case of upper secondary teachers (OECD Education at a Glance 2011).

Using US dollars and purchasing price parity, a teacher in a junior secondary school in Finland was paid $34,707 in the first year, $44,294 in the 15th year and $54,181 at the top of the scale (OECD Education at a Glance 2011). The same teacher in Australia was paid $34,664, then $48,233 and then $48,233. The Finnish teacher gets more at the start and the end, but less in the middle. The pattern is the same for primary and upper secondary, with upper secondary teachers in Finland getting paid more than lower secondary teachers – whereas in Australia they are paid the same.

Then, you have to relate salary to the overall living standards in each country; i.e., not what their salary would purchase in comparison with the salary of someone in another country but in comparison with the salary of someone in a different occupation in that country because it is the latter comparison that affects whether people of high ability in that country enter teaching or not. The OECD also does this by publishing teacher salaries as a percentage of per capita GDP.

You can’t possibly tell if the Labor government’s increase expenditure made a difference yet as students spend 13 years at school. Increased expenditure in the last few does not make up for underspending in the first few.

You can’t possibly tell if the Labor government’s increase expenditure made a difference
Cris C,
I'd have thought that from blatant evidence the difference of Labor's increased spending was of a negative outcome. What other reason could there be to explain the dysmal standard of our school leavers ?

individual,

The performance of our school leavers is not dismal.

PISA tests 15-year-olds, not school leavers.

PISA results still put us above average, though lower than we used to be.

Labor’s investment in primary schools in 2010-2012 could not have had much influence on PISA scores as the students completing PISA were not in primary school in those years in most states.

None of this is complicated or difficult to understand. You just have to stop falling for slogans and start to think precisely.

I’m quite prepared to say what I think we ought to do abut our falling standards, but I really am over the mindless sloganeering that now dominates this site.

My suggestions include:
1) Let teachers teach and principals lead schools – get rid of the bureaucratic and management demands that bog them down.
2) Reward the best teachers for staying in the classroom and make sure they are distributed among all schools.
3) Use the funding system to increase social inclusion, not social segregation as the Gonski and Howard SES models both do.
4) Staff secondary schools as well as they were staffed 30 years ago so that teachers have the time to do their jobs.
5) Retain proper subject disciplines and ensure teachers are qualified in what they teach.
6) Reject trendy nonsense like the open classroom (which due to its failure in the 1970s has been rebranded as “flexible learning spaces”).
7) Improve the welfare system so that we have fewer children in poverty.
8) Make sure schools are democratic and collaborative workplaces that involve their parent communities.
9) Provide for ongoing professional development for teachers.
10) Ensure all children have fully registered teachers.

By chance I read this article just after I had finished listening to a BBC radio program called Boston Calling which addressed the PISA rankings from a US point of view. An author of a book about the Korean, Finnish and Polish education successes was interviewed - her message was that their classrooms were low tech, even in Korea and that government policy requires teacher trainees to be of a very high calibre. Children are taught by direct engagement with the teacher. US exchange students who had been to those countries were interviewed - their message was that teachers were better, better regarded, that maths subjects were integrated and made sense. One also pointed out that any electronic 'educational' device in the hands of a student is also a game machine and is often used as such (thanks KRudd). Not much was said about Poland, which is a pity as apparently it has shot up the PISA rankings despite being a relatively poor country.

Compare that with Australia where doing a teaching degree is the soft option with the lowest entry standard, and where we now apparently have 40,000 unemployed 'teachers'.

Me thinks it has less to do with equipping teachers better and more to do with values. The NSW selective education sector is dominated by students of Asian descent.Their numbers in our selective schools are way, way out of kilter with their percentage of the Oz population. And they are particularly dominant in the maths and science fields

Why is it so?

It can't be about their teachers, since they (initially) attend the same schools as their non-Asian counterparts. It has a huge amount to do with how their parents value education and the support and direction they give their kids.