"School is not for everyone," well-meaning people kept telling Lucy Clark, as her daughter struggled through high school.
But the author and Guardian Australia journalist began to wonder about the way parents, teachers and the whole education system puts pressure on kids, and how narrowly it defines success.
"I started asking questions about what school is for and how we measure success, because here I was with a child who was deemed to be a failure by the system," she says.
In her new book Beautiful Failures, Ms Clark looked at where the system was letting kids like her daughter down, and argues excessive focus on standardised testing is part of the problem.
Australia's slipping results in the international PISA rankings have generated much concern among politicians and policymakers, but Ms Clark says the emphasis on PISA ranking - a global test that every three years pits 15-year-old Australian students against contemporaries overseas - is getting too much focus.
"There is this overarching global pressure now with everyone thinking the way to measure the efficacy of the education system means we have to get up the ladder in PISA," she says. "I think that narrows the focus of what education is becoming, and when we do that, that pressure drills down into the classroom and strips out much of what should be joyful and necessary in education, and leaves us with that narrow view of what success means."
But what does a non-academic vision of school look like?
"We should talk more about the whole child and non-cognitive skills," she says. "It's all about balance. Focusing less on the grades and assessment and giving parents the language to talk about other things.... If we are obsessed with measurement, let's measure other things like character or values or ethical thinking."
Not everyone is buying the argument that standardised tests are changing the nature of education, or even putting that much pressure on kids.
"It's not every year. PISA is a sample test, not every student. Even NAPLAN is only a couple of days every couple of years," says Dr Jennifer Buckingham, Education Research Fellow from the Centre for Independent Studies. "There are no stakes attached to it: it's not like schools are getting extra or less funding depending on results, no one's losing their jobs, kids aren't being expelled.
"If there is high pressure on children, I don't think it's got anything to do with PISA, or NAPLAN either. In and of themselves they're not stressful events. It's the way the adults around children deal with those events. The onus goes back on to schools and parents about the amount of pressure they might be putting on students."
The former head of Curriculum at the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, Phil Lambert, said there is value in PISA data, but Australia is already offering a more rounded curriculum than nations beating it on PISA scores.
"Getting some insight into our progress from an international measure is helpful, we can see where there are particularly groups that are not progressing as typically as we'd want. That should inform policy," he said
Ironically, Dr Lambert says high-performing PISA countries have been locked into their current systems by doing well in the test, while churning out school leavers who may not be as proficient in creative, social or adaptive skills.
He points out that the Australian curriculum, spanning a range of subjects including arts, sport and technology, is broader than that of most other countries.
"We should recognise other aspects of learning where we do very well and acknowledge that's because we culturally value a broad curriculum. Other countries would like to have a curriculum like ours."
