The group, made up of teachers, consultants and academics, say the testing, now in its fifth year, is providing poor-quality information about students' abilities in the classroom and is hampering students' attitudes to learning.

Campaigning under the banner ''Say no to NAPLAN'', the group will launch its broadside against the government's standardised tests at the Australian Education Union's Melbourne offices on Monday.

The union is not associated with the campaign, although it has provided the group with free rent for the meeting.

A group member, Lorraine Wilson, who began her teaching career in 1959, said standardised testing was producing a generation of automaton children and devalued teachers.

''All control of education has been taken out of educators' hands; these decisions have been made by politicians, not by teachers,'' Ms Wilson said.

''What it's doing is de-professionalising the profession. It's standardising the children and expecting them to be the same.''

The group will call on parents to boycott the tests, saying most parents weren't aware the tests are not compulsory.

To support the campaign, the group will on Monday release 10 papers written by academics and consultants, which raise a range of concerns about the tests, including their approach to spelling, and supposed misuse of statistics.

In one paper, the former Primary Education Queensland director Phil Cullen describes the tests as showing ''contempt'' for children.

''During the past few years, schooling in the US, Britain, Australia and New Zealand has become a test-driven, fear-based operation,'' he says.

''Effective teaching-learning strategies are being contemptuously ignored. Preparing for the tests dominates school time and pushes creative aspects of the school curriculum out of the way.''

But a spokeswoman for the Education Minister, Peter Garrett, said reading and writing were ''the foundations of a good education'' and, without them, students would struggle to make the most of their school experience.

"NAPLAN means for the first time, we have a national picture of how are students are performing in these areas,'' she said.

''We can see what programs are working and where we need to invest more effort. NAPLAN tests what is already in the curriculum. If teachers are teaching the curriculum, then they are preparing their students for NAPLAN.

"We do not encourage excessive test practice, nor do we want to put our kids under undue pressure to perform. The whole point of national assessment is to give us in-depth, accurate picture of results in the essential skills every student needs."

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