Education Minister Simon Birmingham has raised the prospect of importing more specialist maths and science teachers from overseas to address a long-term decline in high school student performance.

The South Australian senator acknowledged there was "clearly something wrong" in the education system after a global report found Australian 15-year-olds were getting worse at science, maths and reading.

The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) report found Australia was significantly outperformed by nine countries including Japan, Canada and Singapore.

Senator Birmingham said previous efforts to improve student performance were failing and the Government's first priority was to improve teacher performance in classrooms.

"The single greatest in-school factor in terms of student accomplishment is absolutely the teacher," he told ABC Radio.

"Our number one focus has to always be teacher quality and ensuring that our hardworking teachers are given the skills in their training in the years and then the support through ongoing professional development to be the best."

The PISA report found students in the Northern Territory and Tasmania were performing below the OECD average and private and Catholic schools were outperforming public schools.

Last week, the 2015 Trends in International Mathematics and Science report found Australian performances had stagnated over 20 years with little change since 2015.

Senator Birmingham said he was willing to consider a special visa to ensure Australia had enough specialist maths and science teachers to address the decline.

"If we do need to get more specialist maths and science teachers into the classroom, that's a discussion I am very open to having," he said.

"I hope that states and territory ministers, who of course directly administer our school systems, will actually engage in constructive conversations with me about how we can work cooperatively to address this very serious decline in Australia's real performance across these key areas."

'More money not the answer'

Senator Birmingham said federal funding for schools had increased by 50 per cent since 2003 and extra funding alone would not solve the problem.

"We have consistently tipped more money into our school system over recent years — it has doubled in real terms since 1988," he said.

"This is significant extra funding in our schools [and] now is the time to focus on why it is we are not getting value for money in terms of our results.

"More money, in of itself, is not the answer."

Labor's education spokeswoman Tanya Plibersek said the report was "a very significant concern" as it showed Australian schools were going backwards in some areas.

She called for a more equitable school funding system and said the Coalition had cut $30 billion from schools in the 2014 budget.

"What we are missing is a proper needs-based funding system that directs extra funding to the kids who are falling behind," she said.

"What the PISA results show is a highly inequitable education funding system leading to highly inequitable results."

Ms Plibersek agreed declining performance could not be addressed by funding alone and accused Senator Birmingham of seeking to create a "school against school" argument.

"The central problem here is underfunded schools, particularly in remote and regional areas, particularly in poorer neighbourhoods, and everything this Government has done takes money away from those schools and undermines the reform agenda," she said.