New research says the most popular public high schools are highly segregated. Credit:Virginia Star We aren't allowed to tell it how it is. Even though we've been drowning in a sea of paperwork we've done our best to come up for air and actually teach our students. We've tried to give them one-on-one tutelage but the size of our classes has made this impossible. Then there are the NAPLAN tests that we aren't meant to prepare our students for but do because "bad" results will reflect badly on our schools and give those who want to bag us a free kick. On top of this we've been filling in the host of forms that make taking students on excursions, to sporting events and into the woods prohibitive.

Into the woods? That's where William Doyle's son was sent when he spent some time in a Finnish school. Doyle wrote that his son was given a compass and told to find his way back to school. In Australia his teachers would be hauled over the coals for abrogating their duty of care let alone failing to comply with risk-management strategies. Why is this relevant? Because there has been a lot going on outside the classroom too. With an election looming and school funding well and truly on the agenda, we are having yet another debate about how to lift our educational standards. Politicians and commentators who haven't been inside a classroom since they left school (apart from photo ops) have been pontificating about what is wrong with our schools. The clarion call is, of course, "we need better teachers". Better teachers? Better at what? Filling in forms? Disciplining oversized classrooms? Raising standards with inadequate resources? Does this imply that teachers like me aren't any good?

Hot on the heels of this comes the lament that we are falling behind the rest of the world: "why can't we be as good as the Finns?" I'll tell you why. The Finns don't spend their time arguing about who should fund their schools. They don't waste any ink on public versus private arguments. They don't bag their teachers. As Doyle discovered they regard their teachers as "the most respected and trusted professionals next to doctors". That's not the case here. I have yet to find out what is wrong with the training, just that it needs to be "better". Finnish teachers complete masters degrees. Our unis and colleges are lucky to receive adequate funding to enable them to complete any sort of training. They are forced to lower entrance scores to attract students who will pay the HECS fees that fund the courses. It's Pythonesque.

We want "better" training but we don't want to pay for it. Not only are Finnish teachers respected and trusted, they are recognised as being the experts when it comes to education because they actually work at the coalface, not in an office. I haven't even mentioned comparable pay rates because a country that can't find the will and resources to implement a report that every educator in the land backs is never going to pay teachers what they deserve – let alone the kind of salary that will attract the "best and brightest". We are still arguing over class sizes when the Finns make opportunities for one-on-one teaching by having manageable class sizes. The Finns have virtually discarded standardised testing. We have become more and more reliant on NAPLAN results for meaningless and costly data that enables us to identify the "best" schools.

We actually have great curriculums, as impressive as anyone's – we just don't have the resources to implement them. We burden our teachers with piles of pointless assessment procedures that mask our students true results but satisfy bureaucrats' need for "accountability". As for sending our students into the woods with compasses, we won't let them get a bus to a cricket game without a 10-page risk assessment. Spare me the comparisons. We know exactly how to lift our educational standards. It was outlined in the widely revered Gonksi report. Until we are capable of putting our children's needs in front of anything else we will continue slipping down the educational league table. It's got nothing to do with "better teachers". It's got everything to do with "protecting our children from politicians".

Ned Manning is a high school teacher with more than 40 years of experience. He wrote Playground Duty about teaching.