How will it help the profession?

If assessment methods are to provide a better basis on which to recognise and reward accomplished teachers, we must first demonstrate that they ‘work’; that is, that they are valid, reliable, fair and feasible methods for assessing teacher performance. 

Your frank feedback will be essential in achieving this. Although considerable care has been exercised in developing these guidelines, it is only when practicing teachers use them that we can find how they need to be clarified and improved.

We plan to use your entries as a basis for developing a rigorous and reliable system for training teachers as assessors. Participants will be provided with draft rubrics based on the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (APST) describing the evidence that assessors will be looking for. Your entries will provide ACER with a basis for developing benchmarks illustrating what counts as meeting the APST at the highly accomplished level, something that has not been done before. 

Please join us. We welcome expressions of interest from any teacher, or groups of teachers, in any school in Australia.

A hallmark of a profession is that it can not only define high standards and good practice but that it also has developed reliable methods for identifying and recognising members who have attained those standards.