In a submission to the Senate inquiry into the academic standards of school education, the Australian Education Union argues against the use of standardised tests to measure student achievement and says "there is no crisis in standards".

"The AEU has long been cautious about the use of basic skills tests and other standardised tests as a means of measuring the wellbeing of Australian schools," it says.

"Much of what is important in schooling is not measured by standardised tests."

The submission from the teachers' union includes a list of 24 examples of qualities the AEU says are "exceedingly difficult" to measure in tests, ranging from skills that tests purport now to measure, such as critical thinking, curiosity, question asking and creativity, to more esoteric qualities such as a sense of beauty and humour, courage, humility and spontaneity. While the union acknowledges that 7-12 per cent of students failed to meet minimum standards in literacy and numeracy, "this does not indicate that standards are falling or that standards are worse in Australia than elsewhere".

"The simplistic approach of subjecting students to exam-type situations to determine literacy and numeracy levels is not educationally or statistically valid," it says.

The federal Government has forced the introduction of common national literacy and numeracy tests in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 from next year, replacing the existing system where every state sets its own test.

But the union fears the introduction of national results is part of a federal government attempt to control schools, and would result in the compiling of league tables of schools, identifying some schools, and teachers, as poor performers.

The submission to the Senate inquiry by AEU federal president Pat Byrne and federal secretary Susan Hopgood cites international tests showing Australian students are among the best in the world to argue there is no crisis.

But leading education research centre the Australian Council for Educational Research says in its submission there are wide variations in students' levels of achievement.

The union says the main problem evident from international and national tests is the low achievement by disadvantaged students, including indigenous, rural and remote students.

But the ACER, which runs the tests cited by the union, says socio-economic background is correlated with school achievement but it is not high. While Australian 15-year-olds performed well on average in the OECD literacy test, the ACER says there is significant variability between students, with 7 per cent of Australian girls and 17 per cent of boys at the lowest international standard.

"(This means) they are likely to be able to locate specific details in text but unable to connect ideas or to draw conclusions from a piece of writing," it says. "In some areas, few Australian students perform at very high levels. For example, in international tests of year 8 mathematics knowledge, only 7per cent of Australian students performed at an 'advanced' level compared with 44 per cent of Singaporean students."

The ACER says Australia has one of the lowest high-school completion rates in the world, with almost one in five 20-24-year-olds neither finishing high school nor in education.

"Many young people leave school in Australia with only minimal standards of education," it says. "A significant number of students appear to become disenchanted with and disengaged from schooling during their secondary years."

The AEU submission argues the debate about falling educational standards is hysterical, based on "myths, misconceptions and deliberate deceit" that makes scapegoats of teachers for their students' failings.

"Generic and ill-informed hysteria around 'standards', the quality of teachers or the quality of schools is totally unproductive," it says.

The union accuses the Howard Government of using the debate to hide its inequitable funding of public schools, and says the ALP has been hijacked by the debate so it "also feels it expedient to develop policy designed to deal with the 'crisis"'.