diff --git a/CHANGELOG b/CHANGELOG
index 486690523..f9d5797a2 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG
+++ b/CHANGELOG
@@ -1,6 +1,9 @@
 NEXT
 -----------
 
+- fix issue575: xunit-xml was reporting collection errors as failures
+  instead of errors, thanks Oleg Sinyavskiy.
+
 - fix issue582: fix setuptools example, thanks Laszlo Papp and Ronny
   Pfannschmidt.
 
diff --git a/_pytest/junitxml.py b/_pytest/junitxml.py
index 2371e17ba..d63c23e6a 100644
--- a/_pytest/junitxml.py
+++ b/_pytest/junitxml.py
@@ -129,10 +129,10 @@ class LogXML(object):
             self.failed += 1
         self._write_captured_output(report)
 
-    def append_collect_failure(self, report):
+    def append_collect_error(self, report):
         #msg = str(report.longrepr.reprtraceback.extraline)
-        self.append(Junit.failure(bin_xml_escape(report.longrepr),
-                                  message="collection failure"))
+        self.append(Junit.error(bin_xml_escape(report.longrepr),
+                                message="collection failure"))
         self.errors += 1
 
     def append_collect_skipped(self, report):
@@ -181,7 +181,7 @@ class LogXML(object):
         if not report.passed:
             self._opentestcase(report)
             if report.failed:
-                self.append_collect_failure(report)
+                self.append_collect_error(report)
             else:
                 self.append_collect_skipped(report)
 
diff --git a/testing/test_junitxml.py b/testing/test_junitxml.py
index 2c59d04e0..4bae13886 100644
--- a/testing/test_junitxml.py
+++ b/testing/test_junitxml.py
@@ -252,7 +252,7 @@ class TestPython:
         assert_attr(tnode,
             #classname="test_collect_error",
             name="test_collect_error")
-        fnode = tnode.getElementsByTagName("failure")[0]
+        fnode = tnode.getElementsByTagName("error")[0]
         assert_attr(fnode, message="collection failure")
         assert "SyntaxError" in fnode.toxml()
 
@@ -489,7 +489,7 @@ def test_unicode_issue368(testdir):
     log.pytest_sessionstart()
     log._opentestcase(report)
     log.append_failure(report)
-    log.append_collect_failure(report)
+    log.append_collect_error(report)
     log.append_collect_skipped(report)
     log.append_error(report)
     report.longrepr = "filename", 1, ustr