VTAC STAFF
Mr John Wade, Director of VTAC for the past 27 years, retired on 25 August 2006. Ms Elaine Wenn, previously from the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority, was appointed as the new Director.
INTERNAL AUDIT
VTAC progressed matters arising from the internal audit conducting a penetration test of VTAC's computer security. Four minor risk items were identified and immediately remedied.
The VTAC Management Committee adopted the audit charter prepared by the retiring Director and agreed that VTAC should implement the recommendations forthcoming from the review of VTAC's financial management practices conducted by Monash University. Overall, financial management was reported as appropriate, and the following are representative of the items highlighted. They were not of a significant nature.
- Inclusion in VTAC's financial policy and procedures manual those items related to obtaining quotations, credit card policy and daily banking.
- Changes in the recording of revenue related to processing fees which was already targeted for inclusion in the new application processing system.
- Financial reporting to the VTAC Management Committee be streamlined to provide standard quarterly financial statements with corresponding comparative figures from the previous year.
- Long term investment options be investigated for the lodgement of surplus funds.
As at the time of writing, VTAC has initiated appropriate action.
PROGRESS REPORT ON COMBINED IB CONVERSION TABLE
The combined IB conversion table to be used by New South Wales, Queensland, Tasmania, Victoria and Western Australia, foreshadowed in the last report, will be implemented for the 2007/8 selection cycle. South Australia is still to consider the results of its own state's independent research prior to committing to its use.
STATE TER CONVERSIONS AND PARTICIPATION RATES
VTAC conducted investigations into the current state TER conversions and their relationships to participation rates in the different states. The findings saw VTAC adopting a variation to the original model would remove the clumping evident in the current methodology that emerged in the transition from TERs to ENTERs. The matter was also discussed at the Australasian Conference of Tertiary Admissions Centres (ACTAC) in April 2006, and it is anticipated that other states may adopt a similar position over time. In the meantime, the model will be incorporated into the annual analysis of data as a means of supplying advice on state drifts from the norm.
Interested parties, eg Victorian schools, were apprised of the change for 2005 ENTER calculations with very few queries resulting.
AUSTRALIAN CERTIFICATE OF EDUCATION
The VTAC Management Committee considered the Australian Certificate of Education Options paper prepared by ACER and favoured a combination of option three involving the renaming of existing state and territory certificates as the 'Australian Certificate of Education' which all eligible students would receive rather than the current local certificate, and option four involving the introduction of an Australian Certificate of Education based on a national aptitude test meaning that some or all students in their final year of secondary school in Australia would sit the same test. At that stage, no reference had been made to the national system and the interstate transfer index (ITI) that have been in existence since 1998.
The VTAC Management Committee agreed that, in the interests of increasing awareness of the national capability of the current admissions system, ACTAC be approached to develop a paper for the public domain delineating the national system, in particular the ITI process, which could be used in any debate about a single certificate of education. This was subsequently formulated by VTAC and appended to the ACTAC site. Other initiatives to reinforce the existence of a national system have been taken in the form of, for example, a national brochure, development towards national nomenclature for a number of common items etc.
On 5 May 2006, the Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST) released a report on the development of ACE, however, further information is anticipated following a Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA) meeting. It is considered that the certificate, as presented, would not affect current operations of the selection system but could, over time, strengthen some elements including interstate prerequisite determination and equivalence of overall measures of achievement.
RELEASE OF OFFERS
VTAC will move into line with other states and will release offers electronically prior to publication by the press.
SELECTION 2005/6
The cycle was acknowledged by participating institutions as highly successfulwith no major problems in accurate and timely delivery. With the increasing size of the VTAC system, it was, however, decided that the system rules would be rewritten acknowledging both VTAC's and institutional obligations.
The Special Entry Access Scheme (incorporating scholarships) was successfully migrated to a web application and a working party constituted of institutional representatives and VTAC staff continues to meet to refine the process and achieve the goal set by the VTAC Management Committee of developing a more centralised process to rationalise the current duplication of effort by institutions.
Â