Board Bulletin (Vol 17 No 1)

The Office of the Board of Studies is considering how best to communicate with schools and, as part of that process, reviewing the Board Bulletin’s print and electronic publications.

The Education Act 1990 was amended in September 2007 to make Official Notices effective from the date they are published on the Board of Studies website. Until now it has been necessary to wait for the print publication.

Electronic publication gives schools more timely advice of Board decisions and more time to implement any changes. Emails and websites are already an important source of information for teachers and school executives.

We understand that many schools still rely more heavily on print than electronic communication and so advice about the Official Notices will continue to appear in print form, at least for 2008.

However, there will be an important difference to the Official Notices this year.

All Official Notices from now on will appear on the Board’s website www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au before you receive the Board Bulletin in print.

This is for two reasons:

• The entire Board Bulletin will now be available electronically on the Board's website up to a fortnight before it is printed and mailed out to schools.
• Significant Official Notices will be web-published as soon as they are approved, to give schools more time to prepare for change. Examples might include announcing a new syllabus, or altering the requirements for annual reports from non government schools. These notices could appear at any time during the year.

The date of web publication is the new effective date for each Official Notice. This will be clearly shown at the top of each notice.

Many school staff already subscribe to the Board’s web alert email service, and they receive an email each time new items are placed on the Board's website. As new items are generally uploaded in batches there are usually only two or three email alerts per term. This service is free of charge.

We advise all schools to create a subscription for at least one key member of staff to monitor the Official Notices and other news items that may affect your school's operations.

Instructions for subscribing are at news.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/boardbulletins.cfm. A link to the Official Notices page, which includes the options for receiving alerts about new Official Notices, is on the Board of Studies home page www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au.