Professor Brian Caldwell will warn later today that Australian schools are facing an ''unprecedented level of standardisation, centralisation and bureaucracy''.

He will tell an audience in Hobart tonight that there is too much emphasis on coaching students for national tests and this is killing creativity and innovation in schools.

He will deliver his speech, ''Where Have Creativity, Innovation and Passion Gone in the Great Education Debates of the 21st Century?'' at the Richard Selby Smith Oration hosted by the Tasmanian branch of the Australian College of Educators.

''We need to be giving government schools more autonomy,'' Professor Caldwell said yesterday.

He suggested Australian schools should be given the ability to choose staff, the power to change lessons to make them more localised and the ability to decide how the school's budget was spent.

He said he was deeply concerned Australia was moving to a more constrained, less creative and less innovative approach to education while other nations sprinted ahead.

The professorial fellow at the University of Melbourne said there was an ''unrelenting'' focus on coaching students to pass exams. He said Australia barely made it into the top 20 in the world ranking of innovative nations in the years from 2004 to 2008.

''Despite the popular appeal of the national curriculum, national testing and the My School website, we are unlikely to see more than marginal improvement in outcomes for all students and a closing of the gap between high-performing and low-performing students,'' he said.

The Federal Government had a ''command and control'' approach to education and he questioned whether Prime Minister Julia Gillard's plans for education constituted an ''education revolution'' at all.

For more, pick up a copy of today's Canberra Times