As an educator, having been a teacher, academic and now a consultant in education, I am familiar with the trends in the UK and particularly the USA in recent years where students are "taught to the test" in order to maximise opportunities to perform well with results in national testing.

In fact, some schools in the US have their student recite each morning, "I promise to do well in my tests" before the school day commences"!

It is sad and worrying that the Australian Government persists in following this archaic approach particularly given that in the USA it has not resulted in "better" literacy and numeracy.   More concerning is that this approach has resulted in higher levels of misbehaviour, disengagement and disillusionment in learning from students. It has also pushed a trend to market and measure "education" as if it is an economic commodity.

Standardised testing itself does not provide a holistic or meaningful portrayal of a learner. It provides simply a mark as a table of ranking which measures usually how well teachers may have taught to the test rather than the complexities of life, learning, cultural, well being, knowledge and skills. The true meaning of to be "educated" has been minimised in recent years, particularly in Western societies to depict a narrow view of what a successful teacher, or school or student may be.

It is a sad time when advisors and government officials feel confident that they won't lose votes by introducing and pushing so blatantly a range of measure, rankings and tests that researchers and educators around the world know are misleading and misrepresent the complexities of teaching and learning.

Perhaps, the testing regimes and the ranking of schools may in some policy maker's minds have good intent. It is difficult for me to understand that, but I am hopeful at the very least that the intention is well meaning.

These tests, the public website of school results, instructions to teachers to give practice to "teach to the test" may be incorrectly perceived by some of these policy makers to do what they claim is to "provide transparency to parents".

This is a narrow and patronising view of parents. I work with parents, teachers and children across the country.  Parents do want to know how their children are learning. They do need to and have a right to understand the philosophy and strategies of their child's schools.

However, this is really the fundamental flaw of the whole testing and ranking regime governments are now pushing and sadly some academics are supporting.

You see, people equate in a simplistic manner, that in order to be accountable, in order to be transparent, in order to support schools to continue to improve and in order to continue to help students acquire the fundamental skills in literacy and numeracy, we demean and simply narrow all of that into "teach and drill to a test" and rank results accordingly.  "The test" and subsequent data that are disseminated provides little or no insight into a child as a learner or a school as a successful educational institution.

Has politics really become so powerful that the true elements of successful learning, meaningful assessment and accountability, have been sidelined in order to push this current testing and ranking regime?

Parents have a right to understand the intricacies of their children's learning, their development, their well being and the ways in which their children learn.   

Our current testing and ranking system sends a message to the wider community that all students are ready to learn the same thing, at the same time, in the same way and those individual differences in students, families, abilities, disabilities, and communities are irrelevant.

It seems that the sorts and examples from the USA where students are even now not having proper lunch and play times because teachers are squeezing in even more teaching to the test practices is fast approaching us here in Australia.

I find it a huge blight on Australian society that we have blindly and naively followed the paths of the UK and USA yet again when in fact those countries are not "performing" well on any measure.

It is time for more educators to stand up, speak up and take a stand against these terrible times in Australian education. And I thought we were going to have an education revolution!!!

• Kathy Walker
• Director of Early Life Foundations