Briefing for endorsement

Before we begin, the QCAA acknowledges the traditional custodians of the lands on which we meet today.

We pay our respects to their Elders and their descendants, who continue cultural and spiritual connections to Country, and we extend that respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people here today.

We thank them for sharing their cultures and spiritualities and recognise the important contribution of this knowledge to our understanding of this place we call home.

The purpose of this recording is to outline the intervention process, which has been developed to support schools who have had two unsuccessful attempts at endorsement of an assessment instrument.

Lead endorsers have a four-week period to review assessment that has been submitted by schools for Application 2. At the end of Application 2, any assessment instruments that are not endorsed become part of the intervention process.

Intervention is scheduled to start on the date that has been identified in the email you were sent. You will have just under two weeks to complete intervention with the schools you have been assigned.

Where there are schools who have multiple assessment instruments at intervention, the manager of the Quality Assurance Unit and the learning areas will do some longer-term intervention to address school quality assurance process issues. This is level 2 intervention.

If a school cannot achieve endorsement of an internal assessment instrument after two applications, the QCAA determines timelines and procedures to ensure that consultation occurs with a school’s principal’s delegate or other nominated teachers, and that the school makes the identified changes to the assessment instrument.

The process is as follows:

The QCAA:

• Identifies whether additional support is needed to complete the process within the timelines. Where a subject has a large number of assessment instruments at intervention, intervention officers will be appointed to assist the chief endorser with the process. In some subjects, the principal education officer may also act as an intervention officer. For those of you who have agreed to act as intervention officers for this event, we thank you for taking on this additional role.
• We will then allocate the schools who are at intervention to the chief endorser,

and any intervention officers.

The steps in the intervention process is for the chief endorser or intervention officer to:

• Unlock the instruments in your queue and
• Initiate contact with the school. This is different from the consultation process following Application 1, where the school is responsible for initiating contact with the lead endorser.
• As the chief endorser or intervention officer, you should familiarise yourself with the assessment instrument and the directives that had been provided to the school at both Application 1 and Application 2.
• Consultation can be made by phone, or by email, to discuss the assessment, processes and timelines.
• Once an agreed-to solution has been achieved between the chief endorser/intervention officer and the school, the school makes the changes and resubmits the assessment instrument.
• If the assessment instrument cannot be endorsed, the chief endorser or intervention officer must contact the school and ask them to recall the instrument and make further changes.

There are no written directives or completion of the electronic Assessment evaluation at intervention. The school recalls and resubmits the assessment instrument until it can be endorsed.

When the assessment meets syllabus requirements, the chief endorser or intervention officer clicks on the ‘endorse’ option onscreen to finalise the intervention process.

All intervention reviews are completed in the Endorsement app.

Make sure you have selected QCAA from the dropdown menu in the QCAA Portal, instead of your school, before you open the Endorsement app.

On the homepage of the Endorsement app, there is a ribbon at the top of the screen that identifies all of the sections you will need as a chief endorser or as an intervention officer.

There will be a link in your ribbon called Intervention queue. When you click on that link it will take you to a page that is divided into a number of sections.

This is a view of the Intervention queue in the Endorsement app. The information in the blue boxes is designed to help you understand the different sections and stages of the process.

There are two tabs that work like two pages. The In progress tab is your working space. The Completed tab is the repository for the instruments once they have been endorsed.

In the In progress tab there are 3 working sections:

• The first section is called Locked assessment – this is the version of the assessment instrument that was not endorsed at Application 2.
• The second section is called Ready for review – this is where the assessment that requires your review will appear once the school has made the required changes and resubmitted it.
• The third section is called Awaiting submission – this is where unlocked assessment instruments are located while the school is working on them.

When assessment instruments are not endorsed at Application 2 the Endorsement app locks them. To start the intervention process you must first locate the assessment instruments that are found in the ‘Locked assessment’ section. These assessment instruments are going to need to be unlocked in order for the school to start revising their task.

• Go to your Intervention queue
• Select the In progress tab
• Go to the Locked assessment section, then click on view. This will open a similar view to the one endorsers and lead endorsers use when they complete their view.

To see the assessment instrument while it is at any of the stages of intervention there is a view button to the far right that lets you open the task, the directives, school contact details and consultation notes that were written by the lead endorser or yourself.

You should now be able to see the assessment instrument in the template, and to the right of your screen some buttons.

Locate the green Unlock button and unlock the assessment instrument. You will know this is successful when the assessment instrument moves from your locked queue to the awaiting submission queue.

Use the view button to see the school’s contact details. The Endorsement app contains the contact details for the school submitter, who in most instances is likely to be the principal’s delegate.

You will be provided with an email template that you can use to send an email to the school’s submitter to initiate consultation. The template allows you to customise the text with your availability (days and times). Schools must engage with consultation at intervention. This can occur by email or telephone.

It is likely that there may be several names listed in the submitter details. It is advised to send the email to all of the people listed to ensure that the email reaches the correct person.

When you are preparing for the consultation, you should complete the following steps:

In the In progress tab, under Awaiting submission

• Select the assessment instrument you are preparing to consult about. You will be able to see
  • the assessment instrument submitted at Application 2, and
  • the directives provided (in QA tool and decisions tab)
• Click on the View dropdown menu to see any consultation notes that might have been provided by the lead endorser at the close of consultation.
• Click on the blue Intervention notes button to add any notes of your own. This is also how you record time for the consultation you have with the school. This can be updated as often as needed. You must write something to update your time from the dropdown menu. The school will not see these notes.

When recording your times, don’t add the time that it took you to complete the actual review and decision for the resubmitted assessment. You are automatically paid the piece rate for completing a review at intervention; however, we do need to know how much to pay you for your time preparing for the consultation and the time spent in discussion with schools.

You can update the consultation time if the school has to recall and resubmit the assessment instrument.

While the school is revising the assessment it will be located in your Awaiting resubmission section. Once they resubmit it will move to the Ready for review section at the top of your page.

• Click on View to see the revised assessment instrument.
• Click on the green Endorse button if the assessment can be endorsed.
• If the assessment instrument requires further changes please contact the school submitter again and ask the to recall the IA; explain the additional changes that are needed. Please update your intervention notes and your time for consultation. The school can recall, revise and resubmit until the assessment is ready to be endorsed.
• Please note, there is no Assessment evaluation form or ‘not-endorsed’ button.

On the hidden endorser webpage, there are a number of resources that may of use during the intervention process.

These include:

• a user guide for the app
• information on consulting with schools and recording notes and times
• the consultation protocol for lead and chief endorsers.

You may wish to direct schools to the resources in the Syllabus app such as sample assessments or subject reports. They don’t have access to this assessor page.

During lead and chief endorser training we discussed consultation strategies and completed some activities relating to consultation, including a range of scenarios. We will revisit two of those scenarios that might be pertinent during this round of intervention.

Please take a moment to read the scenarios and the possible responses.

Please read this second scenario.

Remember, your syllabus PEO is there to support you to make subject and instrument decisions. In cases where intervention is not going to be achievable in the consultation period, those schools will be reallocated to the PEO to finalise.

The principal project officers in the endorsement team are available for process- related questions or to offer any assistance you may need when working in the app.

If you have questions please email them to endorsement@qcaa.qld.edu.au or give us a call on the phone number shown on the slide.

If you think of questions during intervention or want to clarify anything, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Thank you for your commitment to the endorsement process and quality assessment in Queensland.

Please make sure that your correct details are included in the My details app.