Shadow Education Minister Tanya Plibersek says she agrees with her Liberal counterpart Alan Tudge that standards are slipping in Australian classrooms.

The Education Minister flagged he wants to see students return to the top of world rankings for reading, maths and science, and the drop in standards is alarming.

“I think he’s quite right to raise the fact we are going backwards on all of the international tests, we are falling, we are falling year after after,” she told Scott Emerson.

“Sadly, this government has been in for 7 years and all that time our results have been declining.

“What we need to do is make sure the funding is right, make sure we are putting enough funding into schools, particularly in our public schools, because the independent and Catholic schools have had funding increases and the public schools haven’t.

“We need to attract the best and brightest into teaching and then keep them there.”

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