As a call to action, "Let's imitate Finland" is unlikely to stir many hearts. Yet, to many Australian educators it's a rallying cry.

To them, Finland is an educational nirvana with high-paid teachers delivering excellent outcomes despite short school hours, the aversion to homework, the absence of external assessments and no annoying school league tables.

If Australia only ditched NAPLAN (our external assessment program), erased the My School website (which contains information about school performance), shortened the school day and forgot about homework (and pay teachers more, of course), we could become an educational powerhouse — just like Finland.

Ironically, Finland owes its status as an educational model to its performance in standardised tests. Specifically, Finland scored highly on tests conducted by the Program for International Student Assessment, widely known as PISA.