Ballarat Secondary College principal Paul Rose yesterday signed a letter addressed to Mr Rudd on behalf of 125 Victorian government school principals.

It was written in response to Mr Rudd's announcement on Wednesday that federal funding of public schools would be tied to their performance against rival schools from next year.

In the letter, the principals said the government had continued the previous government's pattern "of denigrating public schools, their staff and leaders".

"We want to work in a supporting and positive manner with both state and federal governments," the letter said.

"It is difficult to maintain that positive morale in the face of ongoing, unsupported, negative public attacks."

The letter claimed Australian schools performed well by international standards, with Australian schools ranked in the top five to ten nations.

This was despite Australia having been ranked 23rd out of 26 OECD countries for government school funding, the letter said.

Mr Rose said the idea of funding schools via a league table system was "absolute nonsense".

"Because each school community is different, and our schools in Victoria already provide our parents with huge amounts of information about school performance," Mr Rose said.

He said the government could produce better results in government schools by improving pay and conditions for teachers.

"What we know is that if you actually want to achieve high performance, there is a cost."