Assessment in South Australia: Working with the National Reporting System (NRS)

Literacy and numeracy programs for jobseekers have been funded by the Commonwealth Government since the start of the 1990’s. The program between 1993 and mid 1998 was indentified with the acronym SIP, the Special Intervention Program for job seekers. From September 1998 long term unemployed jobseekers would acquire literacy and numeracy training through the literacy/numeracy component of the Mutual Obligation program. This program provides literacy and numeracy training for jobseekers with an identified need to improve their levels of literacy and numeracy skill.

Assessment in South Australia: Working with the National Reporting System is a reference for practitioners looking for guidance in the assessment of jobseekers in training programs. Although the NRS was first available as a reporting tool in late 1995 interest was sparked again late in Semester 1 1998 when it was clear that the Literacy Training for Young Job Seekers Tender (known as Mutual Obligation) would require knowledge of the NRS as a reporting tool.

The South Australian project began early in 1998 when a group of Practitioners met with Rosa McKenna (formerly of Language Australia and in the latter stages of the project with Communication in Education and Training) to hear about an ANTA funded Adult Literacy National Project to develop pre-training assessments using the National Reporting System.

ALRN(SA) considered adding a South Australian flavour by funding South Australian practitioners to develop assessment resources using the National Reporting System. Using the NRS as the assessment tool for current literacy & numeracy programs has presented a number of questions for practitioners which this professional development document addresses through practitioner models.

Your questions may be similar to these:

It is intended that this guide will assist in answering these questions along with others you might have concerning assessment in your LLN programs.

Six practitioners representing programs successful in the ‘18 - 24 Year olds Mutual Obligation, Literacy & Numeracy Tender participated in this project.

Assessment in South Australia: Working with the National Reporting System is the result of the energy and enthusiasm of these people;

Margit Blythman, Liz Linke & Helen Sczesney Employment Directions
Chris Campbell & Lynn Oxlad LM Training Specialists Pty Ltd
Gill Jacka Adelaide Institute of TAFE
Chris Lake Status Employment Services, Inner Western Workskill
Rose Murray Regency Institute of TAFE

Organisation of practitioner examples

Each contributor was asked to use the following headings provided by the ALRN to format their report. These are:

Educator’s Details teacher’s current and past history in LLN teaching and learning
Course accredited curricula used
Context course site and student body
Description of Tasks what skills and knowledge will the teaching develop
Criteria curriculum competency achieved measured against the NRS indicators of competence
Implementation of Assessment instructions for the assessment task
Time Constraints impact of the time available on assessment outcome
Reflections teacher’s critical reflections of the process
Examples of Student Work  

A consistent report format was used in the belief that it would make the assessment examples more accessible to you, the reader. Practitioners understand the contextualised nature of language, literacy and numeracy assessment and the importance of making this information more widely available is indisputable. We believe the value of this document will be in your ability to take up and modify the work of the four contributors as you devise, implement and reflect upon assessment tasks in your specific teaching context.