THE average Australian teenagers’ maths, reading and science skills are barely on par with Singapore’s most disadvantaged students, according to the man behind the world’s top international education tests.

Andreas Schleicher, the co-­ordinator of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), has warned Australia must not be afraid or too proud to look to the world’s leading school systems, particularly in Asia, to improve.

The school testing guru, who arrives in Australia today, says the nation’s economic prosperity is at risk if its school system isn’t brought up to scratch.

His warning comes after Australia ranked a shocking 39th out of 41 counties in terms of quality education on the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) report card in June.

Only Romania and Turkey ranked below Australia in the report.

The nation’s academic results have been in steady decline in international rankings for science, maths and reading since 2000.

“Australia used to have one of the world’s leading school systems, but in the past decade learning outcomes have dropped to levels closer to the average of school systems in the industrialised world,” Mr Schleicher writes in an opinion piece in The Australian today.

“The quarter of the most disadvantaged 15-year-olds in Singapore now show results similar to the average Australian student.”

Underperformance was clearly present among many students across the country in both public and private schools, not just among poor students in poor neighbourhoods, he said.

Mr Schleicher warned success would only go to those individuals and nations that were “swift to adapt, slow to complain and open to change”.

“Obviously, one can’t copy and paste school systems wholesale,” he said.

“But PISA has revealed a surprising number of features shared by the world’s best performing school systems.

“The first thing I learned is that leaders in high-performing school systems have convinced their citizens to make choices that value education more than other things.

“Chinese parents and grandparents will invest their time, energy and money into the education of their children, their future.

“In the Western world, we have started to borrow the money of our children to finance our consumption today.”

Australia also needed to put greater emphasis on early childhood education and turn teaching into a sought-after, highly valued profession.

And not just in terms of pay.

“The challenge is not just to make teaching financially attractive — Australia does reasonably well on that — but to make teaching intellectually more attractive,” he said.

High quality teachers were more important than class sizes, he said.

Teachers in the top performing countries were also encouraged to pursue innovations in practice and professional development for themselves and their colleagues.

His warning comes as the Turnbull Government earlier this year launched a massive overhaul of school funding.

A report on the best way to invest the new money, to be distributed based on David Gonski’s recommendations, is due to be handed to the government in December.

Education Minister Simon Birmingham told The Australiana strong level of funding was important but how the funding was used mattered more.

“That’s why we’ve asked David Gonski to lead a panel of experts to examine best-practice initiatives in classrooms to ensure the additional ­resources we’re delivering are used as effectively as possible to give every student the opportunities they need to reach their ­potential,” Senator Birmingham said.