Message from the CEO, David de Carvalho

Teachers and principals tell NESA they are increasingly finding their work more and more complicated, and not necessarily in ways that enhance teaching or students’ learning. So this year “simplification” will be the guiding policy underpinning NESA actions in all areas of our responsibility – curriculum, assessment, school regulation and teaching quality.

School registration

NESA will be looking at how to further streamline the risk-based school registration program to reduce the administrative requirements for schools without reducing parents’ confidence in the quality of NSW schools. In particular, we will clarify what are NESA requirements and what system authorities may require in addition to NESA.

HSC minimum standard

From this year, schools will have more flexibility as to when they offer the online minimum standard tests. The tests will be “on demand”, able to be taken on every school day from 18 February to 13 December.

eTAMS  

The process to fix problems with the new electronic Teacher Accreditation Management System (eTAMS) has been time consuming, but the user-experience is much improved and getting better.  We plan to continue to make enhancements that improves teachers’ experience of the system.

ACE 

We will migrate the requirements for the HSC and the RoSA from the separate Assessment, Certification and Examination (ACE) website to the main NESA website, making them easier to find and clearer to understand. ACE Online will eventually be closed down.

NESA is committed to continuous improvement in the level of service we provide. This means we need to listen carefully to constructive critique from school communities and to discern the best way to respond, consistent with government policy, our legislative mandate and our level of resourcing. The NESA Charter states that our mission is “to support teachers, schools and systems to provide a high quality education to all students to enable them to fulfil their potential”, and the NESA team looks forward to working with you this year to better deliver on this purpose.