Contact
Lynn Galbraith (08)9273 6702
lynn.galbraith@scsa.wa.edu.au

Schools and other education providers will be required to register their Year 10, Year 11 and Year 12 students with the Authority by Thursday, 16 February 2017.  All other students in Years 7, 8, and 9 must be registered by Thursday, 16 March 2017.

It is critical that Year 10, Year 11 and Year 12 students are registered by 16 February to ensure their inclusion in the compulsory Online Literacy and Numeracy Assessment in March (unless pre-qualified through Year 9 NAPLAN performance or their achievement of the standard in Year 10 or Year 11).  Demonstrating the minimum standard in the three components of the assessment (reading, writing and numeracy) is a requirement for students to achieve the WACE from 2016.

Schools that will be participating in NAPLAN Online in 2017 will also be required to register their Year 7 and Year 9 students by Thursday, 16 February 2017.

Details of how to register students will be provided in the updated Data Procedures Manual 2017, with links to assist schools using Reporting to Parents, MAZE, and Excel.

School Curriculum and Standards Authority (SCSA) student numbers

For information about SCSA student numbers, see the relevant item in this eCircular regarding students entering Year 7 who have already been issued a student number.

Contact
Lynn Galbraith (08) 9273 6702
lynn.galbraith@scsa.wa.edu.au

Limited places are available for secondary school staff, using the Student Information Records System (SIRS), to attend a familiarisation seminar at the School Curriculum and Standards Authority. The seminar is aimed at new and existing secondary school users who have not previously attended a seminar.

Ideally, two staff members should attend; the clerical staff member who may be responsible for maintaining the changes on the school database and the deputy or associate principal who is responsible for timetable changes for students.

The seminar will cover the basic operations and functions of SIRS. This includes data transfer and the generation of reports which enable the information transferred to SIRS to be checked.

The seminar will be approximately two and a half hours duration. Participants will log into SIRS using their own school login and password.

There will be four sessions available prior to school commencing in 2017, which may be preferable for staff in remote and country Western Australia.

Seminar dates and times (2017)

More sessions may be provided if these sessions are fully booked.

Registrations can be made online at
www.scsa.wa.edu.au/internet/Events_and_Forms/Registrations_and_Logins/SIRS_intro.

The seminars will be held in the Mason Bird Building Training Room 1 at 303 Sevenoaks Street, Cannington.  Further details will be supplied to participants once registered.

In 2015 and 2016, two sessions were held in Bunbury for South West participants, and if we have enough interest for 2017, it may be possible to conduct sessions there again.  Please contact Lynn.Galbraith@scsa.wa.edu.au if you would be interested in attending SIRS familiarisation in Bunbury.

Contact
Lynn Galbraith (08)9273 6702
lynn.galbraith@scsa.wa.edu.au

If a student arrives at your school from another school in Western Australia, or even from overseas/interstate, you have the ability to search in the Student Information Records System (SIRS) for that student’s SCSA number. All you need is a surname, given name and date of birth.

All student registrations are recorded in SIRS by the end of March in the current year. After this time you will be able to search for students using the current year. This will then give you the student’s previous school and you will know where to send a transfer note if required.

1. Hover over Enrolments in the horizontal blue menu bar.
2. Click on Student Enrolment > Student Maintenance > Find Student Number (see image below).
3. Click Search. If the information you have entered exactly matches the information in SIRS, you will find a result even if the student is not at your school (see image below).

If the details you have requested are different from the information in SIRS (e.g. date of birth is different, Jackie is spelt as Jacky etc.), no information will be found. In this case, please email numbers@scsa.wa.edu.au and provide the student’s:

• Family name (surname)
• Given Name (First name)
• Date of Birth
• Academic Year
• Previous School (if known).

1.1.1 Troubleshooting: Search SCSA student numbers

1. What happens if the requested information does not show?Email numbers@scsa.wa.edu.au and provide student name, academic year and date of birth.
2. What happens when only 2012 to 2012 is entered in the date range?Only a result for that year will be returned.
3. What does it mean when the Department of Education is shown as the student’s main provider?

Contact
Lynn Galbraith (08) 9273 6702
lynn.galbraith@scsa.wa.edu.au or dataservices@scsa.wa.edu.au

During 2016, students at primary schools implementing the Brightpath or ABLEWA assessment programs were allocated an SCSA Student Number and registered on the Student Information Records System (SIRS). This was undertaken to ensure the accuracy of student data and avoid duplication of records.

These students will enter secondary school (Year 7) in 2017 with an existing SCSA Student Number.

While record duplication is less likely for students entering Year 7 from within K–10 and K–12 schools, the Authority is developing processes for students entering secondary schools with an existing SCSA Student Number in 2017.

From 2017, the Authority will:

1. no longer issue batches of Year 7 Student Numbers in Term 4
2. only issue Year 7 Student Numbers in Term 1, 2017 following a student record check
3. establish processes to ensure continuity of the SCSA Student Number.

The Authority anticipates that transfer of student record data between Department of Education schools will facilitate importing of student numbers and other student information.

The Authority will communicate with primary and secondary schools regarding these processes and the introduction of the Western Australian Student Number (currently called the SCSA Student Number), in 2017.

Schools can use the search facility in SIRS to identify students with existing student numbers, to avoid record duplication during student registration.

Further information can be found in the Data Procedures Manual, on the Authority website at: http://scsa.wa.edu.au/publications/data-procedures-manual.

Contact
Lynn Galbraith (08)9273 6702
lynn.galbraith@scsa.wa.edu.au

Primary schools using the Brightpath assessment tool, ABLEWA assessment tool or who will be participating in NAPLAN online in 2017 are required to upload a Student Registration and Demographic File (SRGDG) to the Student Information Records System (SIRS) at the School Curriculum and Standards Authority.

Schools that will be participating in NAPLAN Online in 2017 will be required to register their students by Thursday, 16 February 2017.  Schools already utilising the Brightpath and/or ABLEWA assessment tools will be required to have their registrations completed by Tuesday 28 February 2017. Student registrations for schools new to Brightpath or ABLEWA are required to be uploaded by Friday 31 March 2017.

Details of how to register students will be provided in the Student Registration Manual 2017, with links to assist schools using Integris, MAZE, and Excel.  Further information will be sent to schools during Term 4, 2016.

Online video training will be available to assist with this process.

Western Australian Student Number (WASN)
A number of schools have already issued a student number to their primary students.  This number will stay with the student throughout their school life.  It is imperative that schools recognise the importance of the WA Student Number to avoid duplication of records and maintain continuity of student data.

If your students already have a WA student number, and you have new students enrolling in 2017 – please contact numbers@scsa.wa.edu.au and give details of the student legal surname, legal first name, date of birth and academic year.  It is also useful to include your school code in any correspondence with the Authority.  There are separate instructions on how to request a WASN for your Kindergarten students in the Student Registration Manual 2017, as it is very unlikely they will already have a number at the commencement of the 2017 school year.

If none of your students have a student number – please also contact numbers@scsa.wa.edu.au and advise how many students are in each academic year K – 6. We will allocate batches of numbers, which you can import into your database/system prior to uploading the SRGDG file to the Authority.

Contact
Mandy Hudson (08 9273 6755)
mandy.hudson@scsa.wa.edu.au

Technologies Interim Achievement Standards

The Interim Technologies Achievement Standards have been placed in the year level syllabuses for both Design and Technologies and Digital Technologies from Pre-primary to Year 10. Teachers from schools across systems/sector have worked with the Authority to provide student work samples to develop the achievement standards, assessment pointers and the annotated student work samples.

Unfortunately the Authority did not receive appropriate work samples for the following contexts in Design and Technologies:

• Engineering principles and systems (Year 5 and Years 8 to 10)
• Food and fibre (Years 5 to 9)
• Materials and technologies specialisations (Years 7 and 10)
• Digital Technologies (Years 7 and 8).

The Authority will continue to work with teachers to collect additional work samples to finalise the Technologies Achievement Standards and Judging Standards materials for the Technologies learning area during 2017. If you would like to assist with this work please contact Mandy Hudson at mandy.hudson@scsa.wa.edu.au

Annotated student work samples for Technologies will be progressively uploaded throughout the remainder of 2016 to the Judging Standards materials.

Technologies Curriculum - a summary of syllabus refinements
This table summarises the refinements that have occurred to the Technologies Curriculum in the process of developing the Judging Standards materials for Design and Technologies and Digital Technologies. The updated version of the Technologies curriculum can be accessed from http://k10outline.scsa.wa.edu.au/home/p-10-curriculum/curriculum-browser/technologies

Technologies ‘Organisation’ and ‘Ways of Teaching’ infographic

The Technologies ‘Organisation’ and ‘Ways of Teaching’ infographics have been refined based on teacher feedback to provide improved clarity about the relationship between both the Knowledge and understanding and the Processes and production skills within the subjects/contexts in the Technologies curriculum.

Contact
Maureen Lorimer (08) 9273 6397 [Wednesday & Friday]
maureen.lorimer@scsa.wa.edu.au

Primary school leaders who wish to be involved in the Brightpath project in 2017 should register their interest online at http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/3156995/Expression-of-Interest-for-Brightpath-2017 by Friday 9 December 2016. You will be contacted early in Term 1, 2017 with information regarding the process for registration and uploading student and teacher data with the Authority.

The Authority will meet the cost of access to the Brightpath Basic Package for schools wishing to participate in the project. This includes unlimited access to the assessment process for all scales, and access to the following central reports:

• Results
• Performance profile
• Teaching points

Online workshop materials are also available to support school leaders in up-skilling their staff.

Participation in the Brightpath project requires the following commitments:

• Inclusion of all teachers and primary school students in the project
• Provision by the school of appropriate support and training for all the school's teachers
• Assess all students at least twice during the year

Any queries regarding Brightpath should be forwarded to brightpath@scsa.wa.edu.au.

The Brightpath assessment and reporting software allows teachers to make reliable assessments of student achievements in a range of areas, based on student performances of classroom assessment tasks.  These include:

• Early childhood oral narrative
• Early childhood recount
• Information report writing
• Narrative writing
• Persuasive writing
• Science investigation

The software records the results of assessments and reports a range of formative and summative information to teachers and principals. This provides teachers with an informed basis for developing teaching programs that target the needs of individual students. It facilitates efficient and systematic collection of school-wide data to support rigorous evaluation of both teaching and learning.