The October 2023 issue of Assessor News covers important dates to put in your diary, new e-learning books for ESOL learners, new widget on Aka Toi, assessor spotlight, and more…
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The October 2023 issue of Assessor News covers important dates to put in your diary, new e-learning books for ESOL learners, new widget on Aka Toi, assessor spotlight, and more…
As we approach the end of the year, we suggest you pop these dates in your calendar:
We have an online Assessor and Moderation Hub on Wednesday 8 November. Sign up on our Assessor and Moderation Hub page.
All Careerforce registered assessors are required to go through an annual registration review. Part of this review is to ensure that each assessor successfully participates in annual moderation. We have two options to help you meet this requirement.
We request that you provide your moderation samples for 2023 no later than 31 October.
Do you have staff with English as a second or other language who have good speaking and listening skills but have trouble reading and writing in English? This means your policy documents are not being read, and filling out incident forms will be a challenge.
A new set of digital read-along books, from Ako Aotearoa, may be a starting point in building their English language reading skills. These are short stories relevant to adult ESOL learners and draw on everyday life activities. They use frequent and useful vocabulary and text structures and, where possible, are repeated throughout the stories.
The books are also available in PDF if internet access is an issue. Ako Aotearoa intend to add to this collection in 2024.
If you are looking for a more bespoke set of resources that connects to your workplace, please remember that English Language Partners will come into your workplace and develop a customised English language development programme for you.
Please remember when completing an assessment, you must:
After this…
Assessment results are to be reported within five working days of the date of assessment. Failure to report results in a timely way is an infringement of learners’ rights and it has a financial implication for some. Prompt reporting of assessment results ensures that learners are active, and avoids the risk of having their Training Agreements terminated due to inactivity.
This reporting requirement is also audited by the Tertiary Education Commission and is one that we will discuss with individual assessors who are not meeting this requirement.
Earlier this year, a number of learners were withdrawn due to lack of activity. Within our training agreements, we do require learners achieve at least 10 learning credits per calendar year, and that failure to achieve credits within any 12 month period may result in withdrawal.
To avoid any learners being unfairly withdrawn due to overdue marking of assessments, can you please ensure that are you as up to date with your assessments as possible over the next few weeks, and prioritising older assessments.
Withdrawal of learners is clearly a last resort, but we do require learners to be active in their learning as we are accountable to our funding body, the Tertiary Education Commission, for this. What we also know is that if we can get learners active within their first three months of enrolment, they are significantly more likely to progress through their programme to completion.
We encourage you to ensure you are up to date with your assessment marking, and also to encourage your learners to become active in their learning to avoid future withdrawal from their training programme (and where re-enrolment fees will apply). Your monthly training reports from Careerforce will help you to identify any learners who are at risk of withdrawal.
Meet Careerforce registered assessor Putoko Thompson, who is based in Tauranga and has been assessing since 2015.
Where do you work and what do you do?
My present role at Supported Individualised Lifestyle Choices (SILC) is Te Kairuruku o Te Ao Māori me Kaiwhakangungu (The World of Māori Coordinator and Trainer). Prior to this, I have been a support worker, team leader, service coordinator, service manager, and community practice manager.
How long have you been at SILC?
About 30 years.
How long have you been a registered Careerforce assessor, and which programmes do you assess?
I was registered as a Careerforce trained assessor on 29 April 2015 and I can assess the New Zealand Certificate in Health and Wellbeing Levels 2, 3 and 4.
How many colleagues have you supported to achieving their qualifications?
Since my assessor accreditation in 2015, I have assisted more than 60 staff to achieving their Health and Wellbeing Levels 2, 3 and 4.
What gives you the most satisfaction from being a Careerforce assessor?
When staff eventually become team leaders, community practice managers, and trainers themselves.
What do you think makes a positive difference to learners doing their programmes?
Clear policies, guidelines, training, and consistency from SILC management (i.e. team leader or community practice manager), of expected behaviours, with regular bi-weekly supervision.
Why do you think other organisations should invest in training their staff?
Confident well-trained staff give consistent support, they can make informed knowledge-based decisions, are also an asset to the company, and deliver good service to people.
What keeps you busy outside of work?
My mokopuna and following their various sports. Pottering around the house, as well as listening to and playing music.
Want to feature in the next assessor spotlight, or know someone who should? Send us an email!
New to Aka Toi? The Careerforce e-Learning Operations team can get you up to speed through their Aka Toi coaching sessions.
Aka Toi coaching sessions are held virtually and cover how to use (but not limited to):
Assessors (and learners) can book a coaching session via this link.
You can also book a session via Aka Toi. Just navigate to Assessor Help and follow the instructions from there.
As well as Aka Toi’s new look and feel, we’ve also built in a new widget to assist those with disabilities.
Earlier this year, we had a site accessibility audit completed to get a better understanding of where we could make improvements and ensure that our sites are user friendly for all. As part of this ongoing work, we have now introduced the UserWay Accessibility widget on Aka Toi.
You will find this widget on the middle right-hand side of all Aka Toi pages. To access this, just click on the icon. This widget has a range of tools to help our users with disabilities and to help better support their digital accessibility needs. The functionality includes easily increasing font sizes, activating dyslexia friendly fonts, adding contrast to the page and more!
Feel free to have a play around with this widget and promote it to any ākonga (learners) or anyone else you feel may get value from it.
Hono mai (connect with me) is a virtual assessor forum open every Wednesday from 1– 2pm. A Careerforce moderator is available during each session to answer any of your burning questions and help you find clarity in your role as a Careerforce assessor.
We acknowledge that some assessors may need further support with marking the following Te Tiriti assessments:
We encourage you to join our Hono Mai Sessions on Wednesdays (1-2pm) where you can have our national moderators answer some of your questions.
You can join the meeting link by logging into iportal. Just click on the ‘Hono Mai meeting for assessors’ menu option. If you get stuck, please email moderation@careerforce.org.nz
We’re excited to unveil Te Pae Ora, an online hub developed by Te Pūkenga. The hub is dedicated to support your ākonga (learners) on their learning journey with Careerforce | Te Pūkenga.
It contains information, advice and resources about wellbeing drawn on best practice and lived experience, and was co-designed with ākonga from across Aotearoa. Please feel free to share this with your staff.
We provide a number of resources and supports for learners who identify as Māori or Pasifika. This support also includes face to face learner sessions. Please check out these pages for Māori learners and Pasifika learners and to see which face to face sessions are planned in your area.
If you have learners that identify as Māori or Pasifika and don’t receive our dedicated Māori or Pasifika newsletters, and would like to, they can email amio.mobile@careerforce.org.nz or pacific.support@careerforce.org.nz
NZQA has recently extended the last date of assessment for a number of our programmes that award version 1 of the qualification. This means Careerforce | Te Pūkenga will now be closing the following programmes on 31 May 2024.
Version 1 NZ Certificate in Health and Wellbeing (Level 3), with strands in:
Version 1 apprenticeship programmes:
There are still several unit standards expiring on 31 December 2023. We are encouraging learners who are yet to complete these, to do so by 1 November 2023.
We’d like to remind you that the following programmes still expire on 31 December 2023:
Please encourage your learners to complete their assessments by 1 November 2023 to allow time for marking and reporting results.
Unit standard expiring on 31 December 2023: US28543 – Describe culturally safe Māori operating principles and values, and their application in a health or wellbeing setting.
As you may have read about in the media, Te Pūkenga released its decision document on its new national structures in September. This followed 5 weeks of consultation on its proposed organisational structure that received over 8,000 feedback submissions, and that contributed to a number of changes to the final organisational structure. Amongst these changes was the recognition of the kaiāwhina workforce via the creation of a focused kaiāwhina domain within the new structure. This is a great outcome as it ensures a continued dedicated focus on this critical workforce.
The focus now shifts to transition planning as we move from 25 individual divisions into a single organisation and which will progressively happen across 2024.
You can read more about the new structure here.
The Careerforce Resource Library is accessible via a secure login on the Careerforce iportal site. While the Library contains downloadable paper-based learning resources, (ākonga) learners are also able to use their iportal login to access their own training progress reports. This gives ākonga a greater sense of empowerment and self-responsibility through their training journey, so we ask you to encourage your ākonga to register/use iportal for their benefit.
We do appreciate all the support and guidance you give to your ākonga. As usual, if have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us:
Assessor News is a quarterly update sent to all Careerforce registered assessors. Archived copies of Assessor News can be found under Assessor Toolkit.