The results come from the four-yearly Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study.Professor Nalini Joshi from the University of Sydney's school of Mathematics says it's an area that needs greater attention.
"I call it abysmal, actually. If you look at the scores rather than the rankings, then what's happened is that Australia has basically remained level while other countries have accelerated past us. And if you look at what we want for our future society, we want growth. We want to train people who are going to be the wonderful experts of the future to develop the technology that we need that we can't even imagine right now to flower for Australia. That means we need people trained in science and mathematics and if that's not going to happen, that I'm afraid Australia will do worse than staying still."
After 20 years of testing, Australia is in the middle of the pack with performance stagnating. Professor Joshi says it's a multi-dimensional problem that needs to be examined on many levels, and professional development of teachers plays a big part.
"There are issues to do with teacher training, teacher support, in terms of leadership in schools, in terms of the messages being passed down from the top level in terms of, for example, for prerequisites in universities."
A quarter and a third of year 4 and year 8 students did not achieve the intermediate international benchmarks in maths or science.
For some students it's the level of engagement that's the obstacle.
And teachers such as Doctor Margarent Ghosn from the Maronite College of the Holy Family have noticed.
"It's not just so much pushing and getting tutors and what kind of tutors is a big issue, but it's allowing children to enjoy the subject, to delve into it and to ask the questions and show critical thinking and until we do that, no matter what we do they're not going to show an interest so we need to make science and maths exciting."
She says it would be costly but the benefits of greater funding is clear.
"It's necessary. As we see Australia is plummeting at where we are in the world. I did go to a conference recently and it's very clear Finland and a lot of other countries are doing exceptionally well in numeracy and literacy, it's because their government has put a lot of funding in their schools. I mean, we might say it costs a lot but in the end we reap the rewards. When we've got a country doing extremely well in numeracy and literacy it benefits everyone."
Education minister Simon Birmingham says the statistics are a wake-up call.
"Australia is not performing to the standard we should expect as a developed economy, as a country with high standards providing record investments in our schools. Australia should be a world leader in terms of school education, not a world lagger. Of course there are things that we can learn from other countries and I want us to listen carefully to the evidence that's there."
Federico Frascoli, Senior Lecturer at Department of Mathematics at Swinburne University, Melbourne.
