NZ First leader Winston Peters says about 15 per cent of the education system is falling short.

Winston Peters is calling for a complete re-think of the country's education system but says Kiwis have to be prepared to pay for good teachers.

The NZ First leader says teachers are right when they say education is "undervalued".

"If you look at the pay to teachers and the status of teachers they have a lot of grounds for thinking that."

"Everybody as a parent wants the best of teachers but as a society we don't want to pay for it," he said.

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Peters is calling for a cross-party, cross-sector hui that addresses from "top to bottom" what the country wants from its education system.

"It's not working - what's happened int he past hasn't seriously worked either if you look at the level of expenditure we're putting into it and the drop-out at the non-performance level - it's simply not acceptable."

The areas where education is falling short is only about 15 per cent of the sector, says Peters.

"I think the disagreements in education are about 15 per cent of the essentials of education itself - but that 15 per cent has become major and I think we can do better in trying to reconcile across the ideological divide what it is we should be doing as a country."

Peters says how tertiary education is funded and charter schools are two controversial areas in education that would be worth further discussion.

"Do we have a lot of our tertiary education actually funded by the now almost total reliance for profit on foreign students? Do we, for example, think charter schools, given their international record, are really going to be a success or not?

"Let's have a discussion - not along ideological lines, but along cost and performance lines and see whether or not we can get a more sound agreement in the interests of students," he said.

The comments come on the back of a speech Peters made at Hora Hora School in Northland on Friday where he said "schools are probably under more pressure today than they have ever been".