Amendment process for lead endorsers

This resource outlines the process that will be followed by lead endorsers when a school submits an application for an amendment.

An assessment instrument may require one or more changes to be made after the endorsement process has concluded.

• An amendment is used when a change is required for an assessment instrument that will be administered with all students in the cohort. Amendments must be approved by the QCAA.
• An amendment may include a change to the questions or topics in an assessment instrument, a substitution of stimulus items or fieldwork locations, or a correction of errors that have been identified by the school.
• An amendment may also be necessary due to an emergent situation. This is where an entire assessment instrument may require replacement due to unforeseen circumstances, or a change is required within a very short timeline. In these circumstances, schools are advised to contact the QCAA to identify the appropriate actions. Emergent issues will be managed by the Quality Assurance Unit.
• If a subset of one or more students requires an alternative assessment due to illness or misadventure, then schools develop one or more comparable assessment instruments. Comparable assessment instruments are school approved and therefore are not submitted to the QCAA.

Section 9.5.6 of the QCE and QCIA policies and procedures handbook describes the amendment process.

Schools that submit an amendment to their endorsed assessment instrument might do so for a number of reasons. These may include:

• problems with the layout or visibility issues that have been identified once the instrument has been printed
• a change in circumstances resulting in a school not being able to attend a venue, location or performance, therefore requiring an alternative to allow students to complete the assessment. Additionally, a school may no longer have access to a resource or technology they had initially planned to use and need to adjust this on the assessment instrument
• identification of an error prior to or during the implementation of an assessment. For example, an incorrect value was noticed during a mathematics examination and at the time, the students were advised to annotate the change on the assessment instrument. The school wants the change to be recorded in the Endorsement application for confirmation, and so that the correct version is available for future use
• feedback received from previous implementations of the assessment or from the confirmation process might mean the school wants to administer the assessment differently, but within syllabus allowances
• students inadvertently being exposed to elements of an unseen stimulus or questions in an examination.

When submitting an application for an amendment, schools will be required to identify a reason for the amendment. They will be required to select a reason from an identified list of categories, and schools can select more than one category. For example, they may be wanting to correct the values in a particular question and then correct formatting issues that were noticed when printing the instrument.

When the endorsement process commenced, schools were required to apply to the QCAA to have changes made to their assessment instrument as the functionality was not yet available in the Endorsement application. The QCAA made the requested changes on behalf of the school.

From 31 October 2022, the Endorsement application will allow schools to revise and adjust their endorsed assessment instrument themselves and submit the amendment for approval.

Moving forward, lead endorsers will be responsible for the more typical and straightforward amendments. The assessment instrument will be assigned to the lead endorser who initially endorsed the assessment instrument. If the initial lead endorser is not available to complete the amendment, it will be reallocated to another lead endorser for that period.

The flowchart on the screen outlines the amendment process:

• Firstly, schools revise their endorsed assessment instrument in the Endorsement application and identify the scope of the change/s.
• The lead endorser who initially endorsed the assessment instrument completes the review. This is similar to the review that is completed at Application 2 during an Endorsement event, which involves only the lead endorser review.
• If minor issues are detected during the amendment review, such as a spelling error or formatting issue, the lead endorser can make a request to the school to recall their assessment to make further changes. This is at the lead endorser’s discretion. This opportunity to recall the instrument is not to be used if significant issues are detected in the assessment. If there are significant issues identified, then the instrument should not be endorsed.
• If the amendment is not endorsed, the school must use their previously endorsed assessment instrument. Any further changes are referred to the QCAA Endorsement team.
• If the amendment is endorsed, the new assessment instrument replaces the previous version.

For each amendment review completed, the piece rate is paid to the lead endorser. If a consultation is required, you will also be paid for this. This mirrors the Application 2 process that is in place.

Just as is the case when completing an Application 2 review, you will decide whether the amended assessment instrument can be endorsed.

In most cases, the amendments you receive will be able to be endorsed.

If the amendment can be endorsed, you simply click the green Endorsed button in the Endorsement application and the process is complete.

Past experience has indicated that occasionally some minor mistakes may occur when submitting an amendment, but overall, the amendment request can be supported. Some of the errors that may occur when revising sections of the assessment may include typographical errors, spelling errors, minor legibility issues, or the changes not being applied to all sections of the assessment instrument. For example, the school may replace the name of a physical activity in most sections of the assessment instrument but miss making the change in one section.

If the amendment requires minor changes to be made before it can be endorsed:

• contact the school submitter and ask them to recall the amendment to make required changes. Please note that schools can only recall their IA once, so it is important that they are aware of all changes that need to be made in the first instance
• record your consultation with the school (up to 15 minutes) in the Endorsement application
• once the school has made the changes and resubmitted the assessment instrument, review the instrument again and finalise your decision.

Some changes requested by the school may not meet the assessment specifications. These issues could include incorrect subject matter, tasks that don’t align to the assessment specifications or objectives, a reference to an incorrect assessment technique, or if the assessment contains inappropriate themes that may cause offence, humiliation, intimidation, distress or harm in the wider community.

If the amendment cannot be supported:

• contact the submitter and explain why the task cannot be endorsed. Directives are not provided to schools via the Endorsement application for amendments
• record your consultation (up to 15 minutes) in the Endorsement application
• click the red Not endorsed button.

When contacting a school, either about the minor changes that are needed or to advise of the reasons for why the instrument cannot be endorsed, this can be done via an email. You are not required to engage in an extensive consultation with the school.

When accessing the Endorsement application, you will see an Amendment queue tab.

All amendment actions will be accessed from this tab. This will open screens that are very similar in appearance to your typical Application 1 and 2 screens and will operate in a similar way.

When you first open the Amendment queue, you will see two working tabs

— In progress and Completed.

The In progress tab displays amendments that are ready for you to review and amendments that are awaiting resubmission.

You can review the amendments in the Ready for review section by clicking on the View button. This will require you to complete a full review of the instrument. You do not need to compare the amended task to the previous version, as you may do during an Application 2 review, so you will only be working in one view during the amendment process.

If a school recalls their assessment instrument because you have asked them to make a minor change/s, it will move into the Awaiting submission section. This will allow you to keep track of the amendment requests you have received. Once the school resubmits the amendment, it will move back into your Ready for review section.

To help you during the amendment process, there is help text (featured in a blue box) that will appear onscreen to step you through the options and actions that are available to you.

A series of buttons will appear across the top of the screen that will allow you to complete the required actions or look up the necessary information to complete the process.

If the amendment requires changes before it can be endorsed:

• click on the School details button to find the contact details for the submitter. Ask them to recall the amendment and explain the required changes
• record your consultation by clicking on the Consultation notes button. You can claim a maximum of 15 minutes. Remember that this should only be required for minor changes. If you thinkit would take more than 15 minutes to explain the changes that are needed, it is probably not a minor issue
• once recalled, the amendment status will change to With submitter and the amendment will appear in the Awaiting submission section of your screen
• schools can only recall the assessment instrument once to make the changes.

If the amendment can be endorsed:

• simply click the green Endorsed button and the process is then complete.

If the amendment requires minor changes before it can be endorsed:

• Click on the return to school button
• click on the School details button to find the contact details for the submitter. Ask them to recall the amendment and explain the required changes
• record your consultation by clicking on the Consultation notes button. You can claim a maximum of 15 minutes. Remember that this should only be required for minor changes. If you think it would take more than 15 minutes to explain the changes that are needed, it is probably not a minor issue
• once recalled, the amendment status will change to With submitter and the amendment will appear in the Awaiting submission section of your screen
• It is important to note that schools can only recall the assessment instrument once to make the changes.

If the amendment is not a valid assessment request:

• you will need to contact the submitter first and explain why the task cannot be endorsed as a professional courtesy. There is no place to write directives for an amendment request.
• record your consultation notes (up to 15 minutes)
• click the red Not endorsed button and the process is complete. You will only be able to click the red Not endorsed button in the pop-up box once you have acknowledged that the school has been advised of the outcome by ticking the checkbox.

As outlined in the QCE and QCIA policy and procedures handbook v3.0, schools can only seek one amendment through the Endorsement application, therefore they cannot submit another amendment request for this assessment instrument if it is not endorsed. If the school needs to make further changes, they need to contact the Endorsement team in the Quality Assurance Unit, and we follow up with the school.

Clicking on the School details tab will provide you with the contact details of the school and the person or people that you will need to communicate with either via phone or email.

If you are sending an email, it is advised that you include all of the submitters to ensure that the message is being communicated to the appropriate person within the school. Where there are multiple submitters listed, it is not possible to identify who the school’s principal’s delegate is, therefore it is important that all people are made aware of whether a minor change is needed or if the amendment cannot be endorsed.

Consultation notes and times are recorded in the same way as for Application 2 reviews. This is to be used if you have asked the school to recall the assessment and make changes, or to notify the school that the amendment request can’t be supported.

The maximum consultation time is 15 minutes.

You do not use the consultation notes to record your review of the assessment instrument. You are paid for each amendment request that you receive, regardless of whether you need to consult or not. Reviews are paid at the piece rate, which is 10–20 minutes depending on the assessment technique, and is based on the total number of instruments in your completed queue tab.

When clicking Print preview to review the assessment, a pop-up box will let you know how the assessment will be generated. Once your review is completed, be sure to remove the assessment instrument from your device.

When an amendment request has been submitted by a school that you have been assigned, you will receive an email notification from the Endorsement application. You will then have two weeks from the receipt of the amendment submission to complete your review.

Schools are being advised to allow for a two-week period for completion of the amendment review process, therefore they should be submitting the amendment well before the date it will be administered with students. If a school requires an urgent amendment, they will be advised to contact the Endorsement team of the Quality Assurance Unit at the QCAA.

The Endorsement application has been built to provide a window of time for schools to create and submit their amendments. Schools are unable to submit an amendment in the two weeks prior to the school holidays in July and at the end of year. This means you will not receive any amendment requests that would require you to work during those holiday breaks.

The number of amendment requests you may receive within a year will vary. Some subjects experience very few amendment requests, so you may not be required to complete an amendment review at all. Some subjects (e.g. Mathematics subjects) may experience more amendment requests; however, it is still likely that you would receive a very small number of amendments to complete within a year. This is dependent on the number of lead endorsers in your subject and the number of schools that have been allocated to you. We try to work on the premise of approximately 20 schools per lead. Each school can submit a maximum of one amendment request for an endorsed assessment instrument.

From January to September 2022, the highest number of amendments observed in one subject was 60. If all of these had been completed by lead endorsers for that subject, this would have averaged approximately three amendments each for the year.

If you are taking leave during the school year (excluding school holidays) and would therefore be unavailable to complete any amendments during that time, please ensure you advise the Internal Assessment Operations Unit via the email on the screen of your periods of unavailability. This will allow us to reassign schools during this time to ensure that any amendment requests will be actioned.

Some periods of the school year do experience a higher number of amendment requests. For example, the commencement of a new school year experiences a number of amendment requests for IA1 or IA2 assessment instruments that were endorsed at Event 1 in the previous year. Therefore, it is important that we are aware of any absences as early as possible.

Finally, if your circumstances change and you are no longer able to continue in the role of lead endorser, please advise us at your earliest convenience. Again, this allows us to reallocate schools as necessary.

If you need any further assistance, please direct your query to the appropriate email address on the screen or click on the Help link in the endorsement application.

Thank you for the work that you do in your role as a lead endorser to support Queensland schools in developing quality assessment for their students.