Accreditation Supervisors

If you work in a school, your principal will assign you to be an Accreditation Supervisor. You must be accredited at Proficient Teacher or above.

If you are on a Leave of Absence or accredited as Non-practising, you may be appointed if there is no other Proficient Teacher available.

If you work in an approved Early Childhood Service and have completed the Accreditation Supervisor training, you can supervise teachers with whom you work.

If a colleague asks you to be their Accreditation Supervisor, speak with your employer or service director, then email us: ECTaccreditation@nesa.nsw.edu.au. We will assign you to be your colleague’s Accreditation Supervisor.

Once you have been assigned, you will see an ‘Accreditation Supervisor’ dashboard in your NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) online account (eTAMS). When you are allocated a teacher, this will appear in your dashboard as a task.

When you accept the task in eTAMS, the teacher will be notified.

We recommend the following courses:

• Accreditation Supervisor Orientation Course in NESA Learning
  • Learn more about your role and responsibilities.
  • Access guides and resources to help you.
• Making Consistent Proficient Teacher Accreditation Decisions in NESA Learning
  • Learn more about the characteristics of effective documentary evidence.
  • Become confident making judgements about a teacher’s documentary evidence.
• Accreditation Supervisor Workshop
  • Learn more about supporting your colleagues as they develop their practice.
  • This is an online workshop run each term. Check availability and register through the showcases, courses and events page.

Get started

Assist the teacher to:

• get familiar with the process of applying for Proficient Teacher accreditation
• complete NESA’s online Proficient Teacher Orientation Course (this is mandatory for teachers who were accredited at Conditional or Provisional after November 29, 2021).

Help your teacher understand the Standards

Make sure both you and your teacher understand:

• the Standards at the Proficient Teacher career stage
• your employer’s internal procedures for gaining Proficient Teacher accreditation.

Work with them

Discuss a plan to help the teacher develop their practice to meet Proficient Teacher requirements. Encourage them to attend a NESA workshop for hands-on learning.

Meet with them regularly to:

• help them reflect on their teaching practice
• give them feedback.

As part of your ongoing discussions with the teacher, give feedback and develop a plan to specifically address any Standard or specific Standard Descriptor they are yet to demonstrate in their practice or evidence.

Documentary evidence

Support the teacher as they collect documentary evidence. This is produced as a natural outcome of teaching, and not created for the specific purpose of accreditation.

If the teacher is collecting documentary evidence across multiple schools/services, you can ask them to get this authenticated in eTAMS.

Support the teacher to choose 5 to 8 items of evidence for submission to NESA which in total show that each Standard is being met. Each evidence item can link to 2 to 4 Standard Descriptors.

Review their evidence and annotations

Review and give feedback to the teacher on their collection of documentary evidence and annotations.

Use the Proficient Teacher evidence guide (PDF 622.02KB) to guide your feedback.

Observe their practice

You must conduct an observation of the teacher’s teaching practice. The observation needs to include the 3 phases:

1. planning
2. observing
3. reflecting.

Where it is not possible to conduct the observation in person, you may arrange with the teacher to complete a virtual or recorded observation.

Observation report

You must write an observation report. The planning phase is the first part of the observation report and is filled in by the teacher.

The teacher will then complete a reflection on your report, and upload the report to eTAMS.

Download the Teacher accreditation observation report template (PDF 960KB).

Make a holistic judgement that the teacher is ready to finalise their application

When you and the teacher agree that their application is ready, ask the teacher to submit it in their eTAMS. You will receive notification when this arrives in your eTAMS.

Your holistic judgement is based on:

• professional conversations with the teacher throughout their accreditation period
• your knowledge and observation of their practice over time
• the 5 to 8 items of annotated documentary evidence selected to represent their practice
• any feedback and support provided to the teacher (for example an improvement plan or other intervention, and the outcome of such intervention where applicable).

Review your teacher’s application

Review the application in your eTAMS to make sure:

• the evidence matches the chosen Standard Descriptors
• the annotation explains how the evidence demonstrates all the chosen Standard Descriptors
• there is enough evidence to fully demonstrate the chosen Standard Descriptors
• the teacher has ticked the correct descriptors in eTAMS when uploading.

Give specific feedback on any Standard Descriptors that are not demonstrated in the documentary evidence.

If revisions are needed

1. You can request revisions in eTAMS. Continue to support the teacher to strengthen their documentary evidence demonstrating the nominated Standard Descriptors.
2. If necessary, work with the principal/employer to develop an improvement plan or other intervention to support the teacher to demonstrate the specific Standard Descriptors not yet demonstrated.

Complete your declaration

Make a declaration as to whether the teacher has met the Standards. Do this in eTAMS within 28 days of the date the teacher submitted their application.

The application will go to the principal to make an accreditation recommendation to NESA within 28 days of your declaration. For early childhood teachers, the application will go to a NESA officer to make an accreditation recommendation.

If the principal/NESA officer asks for revisions to the teacher’s application:

• advise the teacher via eTAMS that their application needs revisions
• continue to support the teacher as they make the requested revisions
• make a new declaration once the teacher has completed the revisions.

If the teacher has not met requirements

You may make a declaration that the teacher has not demonstrated practice at Proficient Teacher if:

• an improvement plan or other intervention has been developed and implemented
• it is still your holistic judgement that the teacher's practice does not yet meet each of the Proficient Teacher Standards.

Make this declaration within 28 days of the teacher submitting their application.

You must provide evaluative comments in eTAMS which outline the:

• issues
• Standard Descriptors not yet demonstrated
• feedback and support offered to the teacher
• teacher’s response to the feedback and support.

Discuss your intention to make this declaration with your principal.

Your principal will make a recommendation to NESA. They may request the teacher make revisions.

The revision request will go back to you as supervisor in eTAMS for you to then discuss with the teacher.

NESA makes the decision within 28 days of the principal’s recommendation. The teacher will be notified by email.

First maintenance period begins

If NESA accredits the teacher at Proficient Teacher, they will start their first maintenance period on the day the accreditation decision is made. NESA will issue them a certificate.