The number of young people not in full-time work or education is startling and worrying, Acting Prime Minister Julia Gillard says.

Up to 20 per cent of Australians aged between 15 and 24 are not in full time work or education, new statistics show.

Australia ranks 23 in a list of 35 OECD countries for the number of students who finish year 12 or equivalent.

"These are pretty startling and worrying statistics," Ms Gillard told ABC Radio.

"We need to be lifting retention to year twelve or equivalent.

"None of this is going to be easy...(but) we need to make sure that young people are staying in education and coming out with skills.

Australia could not afford to have young people lose their way into "some twilight world" between school and work."

Ms Gillard will use a speech to the Australian Council of Educational Research on Monday to outline a plan to provide comprehensive statistical information about the performance of schools.

It would be more than simply drawing up league tables, she said.

"The essence of league tables is you take one little thing and whack it in a list and say that's all you need to know about your local school.

"We are certainly not in (to) that."

"What we want to know is very comprehensive information about who is in each school because that would tell you something about educational need.

"We need to know where that disadvantage lies and we need to know the best methods of addressing it."

However, Victorian Education Minister Bronwyn Pike says Australian schools should not be ranked against each other.

Ms Pike said a ranking system could disadvantage schools and the focus should be on students' individual progress.

"What we are better off identifying is the kind of extra value that education offers so that we measure the progress people are making, not the raw results," she told ABC Radio.

"All information, other than those things of course that are subject to privacy provisions should be made open and accountable to parents, to the broader community.

"But ... in the end the focus has to be on the child and how they are progressing and what we are doing to improve their educational outcomes."

Meanwhile, NSW Premier Morris Iemma says he can see difficulties in trying to rank Australian schools against each other.

Mr Iemma said recent changes to school reports in NSW had given parents a better understanding of schools' performances.

However, comparing schools in different parts of the state could prove difficult, he said.

"It's like hospitals, it's the rules around that (ranking)," he told reporters.

"Because if you're going to stand in a hospital - and it's a similar example with schools - like Westmead and compare it, for example, with a small district hospital, like Canterbury, and then attempt in some way from the straight statistics that appear on that list to rank those two hospitals, you would not be comparing like with like."

Opposition treasury spokesman Malcolm Turnbull has also weighed in on the debate, saying parents should be better informed about the performance of schools in relation to each other.

Mr Turnbull said greater information and greater awareness enabled parents to make more informed choices about their childrens' schooling.

He said Howard government programs for greater testing and the provisions of school test results to parents had previously been opposed by the Labor party.

"All of the programs that we introduced ... have resulted in Australian parents being better informed about schools' performance and schools' relative performance than ever before," he told reporters in Sydney.

"We believe in competition, we believe in information because you can't have effective competition without information.

"People are entitled to know what's going on with the schools and how they compare."