A4L Community Newsletter - December 2016 A4L Newsletter - December 2016 | Page 7
NEWSLETTER | Issue 34
7
National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN)
by Georgina Johnston, NSIP
and school level assessments in the
future.
The National Schools Interoperability
Program (NSIP) in Australia has been
working closely with State/Territory
authorities to establish standardised
data sets for use with National
Assessment Program Literacy and
Numeracy (NAPLAN) based on the SIF
standard.
An assessment platform is being
developed
to
provide
central
functionality initially for common
national level assessments but with the
capability to support State/Territory
Agreement on a standards based data
set to facilitate data exchange between
the systems operated by schools and
school authorities around the country
and the central platform is seen as
critical to the success of the project.
The NAPLAN Online data set supports
both student registration and retrieval
of results data. NAPLAN is currently
delivered as a traditional pencil and
paper test so the transition to an online
adaptive
test
using
a
central
assessment platform has set some
important
challenges
to
define
common business processes and move
large amounts of data securely
between local and central systems. SIF
Data Model Specification has proven
valuable in encapsulating the complex
results data set in a form that can be
interpreted by a wide variety of
consuming
systems
around
the
country.
NSIP will work over the coming months
via the Data Standards Working Group
to incorporate the NAPLAN data
structures into the SIF Implementation
Specification (Australia) and provide
support to stakeholders including
software vendors involved in the
NAPLAN data cycle. This includes
software development and integration
tools and access to NSIP’s Hub
Integration Testing Service (HITS).
2016 AU Election results
by Georgina Johnston, NSIP
The
Access
4
Learning
(A4L)
Community,
formerly
the
SIF
Association, is proud to announce the
election results for the Australian
Management and Australian Technical
Boards for 2017. The Management
Board brings a wealth of experience
and knowledge in education, data
management, technology and business
acumen. As members of the Board,
each individual will be assisting in
providing
strategic
direction,
management and oversight for the
affairs of the A4L Community for
Australia.
The AU Community also approved
members of the AU Technical Board
(known as the Data Standards Working
Group (DSWG)), who provide technical
oversight for the SIF AU Specification.
The
2017
DSWG
supplier
representatives are:
Elected 2017 A4L Community AU
Management Board supplier members
are:
Commenting on the outcome of the
elections and plans for the year ahead,
the new Chair of the A4L AU
Management Board Dave Burns
(Executive Director Web and Digital
Delivery, Department of Education and
Training (Queensland)) stated, “On both
the management and technical boards
Tim Dawson, Synergetic
Grant Grosser, SEQTA Software
Antony Mawer, Sentral Education
Colin Wood, Verso Learning
Lance Duivenbode, SEQTA Software
James Hamilton, Sentral Education
Joerg Huber, Systemic
Stuart Mitchell, Verso Learning
James Overell, Synergetic
Mark Vanderkley, SIMON Schools
Renier Venter, Civica
we have a valuable mixture of
experience and fresh perspectives. This
bodes well for the progressive
implementation across K-12 education
in Australia of a learning services
architecture based on SIF which is
supported
by
both
education
auth