Michael Gove has used the latest publication of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's Pisa tests as evidence that education standards in the UK have been stagnating for the past 20 years.

The UK was ranked in 26th place overall in the international table, which tests the reading, maths and science skills of a random selection of 15-year-olds and the education secretary believes his reforms are an attempt to stop the country's pupils from failing even further behind.

Since the last publication three years ago, the UK has made little progress with 26th place for maths and 23rd place for reading broadly similar to last time, but the country has slipped from 16th to 21st place in science teaching.

Pisa tests, which stand for the Programme for International Student Assessment, have become important to many education systems and are used to measure the merits of classroom standards in Europe, North and South America, Australasia and parts of the Middle East and Asia.

Although China does not participate as a whole country, its high-performing cities - Shanghai and Hong Kong - finished first and third in the list.

Shadow education secretary Tristram Hunt said Mr Gove needed to take some responsibility for the lack of progress and believed the final table was evidence that effective collaboration between schools and teachers was a better basis for education policy than market forces. 

Chris Keates, leader of the NASUWT teachers' union, stated the UK's Pisa results should not be used to "talk down our public education system" and backed Mr Hunt's view that the countries which have performed well in the global assessment are the ones in which teachers and teaching is a revered and respected profession. 

As someone who has experience in a teaching job in the UK, how important do you think global rankings are? Is the current education policy going to improve the standard?

Let us know your feelings on the matter.