The Record of School Achievement (RoSA) will give students leaving school prior to receiving their HSC the option of taking online literacy and numeracy tests.

These tests are not compulsory and are not designed for the whole cohort, but rather are tailored to meet the needs of those students leaving school to seek work or other training and education opportunities.

The concepts of literacy and numeracy to be tested have an emphasis on work readiness and have been drawn from the Australian Core Skills Framework (ACSF), developed by the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR).

The literacy and numeracy tests will be mapped to Levels 1, 2 and 3 of the ACSF skills in Reading, Writing and Numeracy.

In 2012, the Board will conduct a pilot of the tests. Only Year 10 students who advise their school that they intend to leave and wish to sit the tests will be eligible to participate. Schools will be able to enter students for the tests through Schools Online. The tests are planned for the last week of November 2012.

A PIN system will be used to ensure that only students entered by their school can access the tests and only during the relevant testing window. Schools will be given more advice on how the tests will be administered later in Term 3.

The Board’s literacy and numeracy tests will each be one hour long and consist of 60 multiple choice questions in each test. The tests are to be taken in one sitting with a short break between them.

Information on how test results will be reported will be made available later in the year.

The evaluation of the pilot will inform arrangements for the tests in 2013. Ongoing evaluation will help to guide the full implementation of the tests for Years 10, 11 and 12 in 2014. It is expected that over time there will be a wider range of item types in the tests.

For more information on the RoSA visit www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/rosa