Te Mahi Ako | Kaiaromatawai (Assessor) Newsletter | September 2024

Poipoia te kākano kia puawai

Nurture the seed and it will blossom

Kia ora tātou!

Welcome to the spring edition of our Te Mahi Ako Assessors Newsletter.

A big thank you

As we dive into another season, we want to take a moment to celebrate your contribution to assessment. Your dedication and hard work are appreciated and make a significant difference to our mahi and our ākonga.

It was great to see so many of you online in forums or even in person at the WAVES lifeguard competition recently. We have a lot online correspondence with you, so it’s truly delightful to get to meet in person when we have the opportunity.

Vocational education reforms

Last week, you will have received an email from us about the Government’s proposed changes to the vocational educational and training sector (VET), which you can read more about here.

As key contributors to the sector, your input is crucial to ensure the reforms reflect the real-world needs of learners, industries, and training providers. If you’d like to make a submission, you’re welcome to use one of the template letters Skills Active and Te Mahi Ako have developed, available here on our website. Please send submissions to vocationaleducation.reforms@education.govt.nz.

Submissions close at 5pm on Thursday, 12 September.

We appreciate your dedication to the sector and your role in shaping the future of vocational education. Together, we can ensure the reforms meet the needs of both learners and industry.

Portal update

The credit reporting portal for assessors is being updated to add a search function. This will make it easier to find learners when reporting credits. As part of this update, the layout will change slightly, but the credit reporting process itself will not.

See the screenshots below for a preview of the revised layout.

Credit reporting and marking best practice

We appreciate and understand that you are busy in your roles, however as a reminder: Marking best practice policy is a 10-day turnaround from when ākonga complete their assessments.

• Lee will send out reminders for overdue marking however can you please check for submissions from your ākonga
• Report your credits once you have completed your marking
• We’re here to help! If you are having Skills Activator or portal issues, please get in contact with Emma at emma.lindsay@temahiako.org.nz

Evidence verifier course

Evidence verification is a great way for day-to-day evidence to be captured and documented when you, the assessor, are not present. Compliance around evidence verification is required by Toi Mai, so to meet our compliance we need you to support evidence verifiers to complete this short online course.

Resources highlight: Sensory modulation training

In our last two newsletters we shared access to some free courses offered by Achieve eLearning, which are still available to complete. We hope these courses continue to be of interest and value to you.

This time we bring you an interesting sensory modulation training package from Te Pou – take a look here.

Once again, ngā mihi nui for your mahi. Te Mahi Ako highly value the work you do to support and assess our ākonga so that they can thrive.

Mā te wā
Lizzie, Lee and Emma