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Opening of the National Centre of Indigenous Excellence

26/02/2010

Joint Media Release with The Hon Kevin Rudd MP, Prime Minister
The Hon Warren Snowdon MP, Minister for Indigenous Health
The Hon Jenny Macklin MP, Minister for Families Housing Community Services and Indigenous Affairs.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd today officially opened the $50 million National Centre of Indigenous Excellence (NCIE) in Redfern, Sydney.

Created with the support of the Indigenous Land Corporation, the facility will provide world-class facilities in sport, education and the arts for up to 5,000 young Indigenous people from around Australia each year.

The Centre has a fully equipped gymnasium and sports hall, outdoor 25-metre swimming pool, intensive literacy tutorial centre for 60 primary school students, arts/craft activity rooms, sporting field and campus accommodation for visiting groups of more than 100 people.

This is a world-class facility that symbolises a new era in Indigenous education, engagement and leadership.

Through its four development pathways of Sport, Learning and Innovation, Culture and Arts and Health and Wellbeing, the NCIE will create opportunities for young Indigenous people from across the country.

A number of existing programs will be accommodated at the new facility including the National Aboriginal Sporting Chance Academy and the Lloyd McDermott Rugby Development Team, which encourages healthy lifestyles through sport.

The Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience, also based at the facility, is working to match Indigenous high school students with mentors from universities to make sure they stay the course in school and progress to university.

Primary school children will have access to a six-month accelerated literacy program at the Centre’s intensive literacy tutorial centre.

This program, run in partnership with Macquarie University and the Exodus Foundation has produced phenomenal results, with literacy levels for some kids rising 2 years in just 6 months.

The Centre will also provide new education and employment opportunities for local Indigenous youth including jobs in sport, recreation, youth and community programs, and hospitality when the Centre is fully operational.

As a facilities partner, the YMCA is helping to train NCIE staff to manage the health and fitness and camp facilities.

The Australian Government congratulates the Indigenous Land Corporation for backing the vision for this tremendous new development.

International Student Admissions Test moves to computer-based testing

This article was taken from the February 2010 edition of ACER’s Higher Education Update – a newsletter outlining ACER’s work in the higher education sector. To read the full newsletter visit http://www.acer.edu.au/highed/

A move from paper to computer-based testing for the International Student Admissions Test (ISAT) will improve access to Australian degrees for international students. ISAT provides universities with the opportunity to use a reliable and efficient way of testing students’ potential to cope academically with Australian tertiary courses. It complements existing English-language competency tests.

The test is independently administered by the ACER. ISAT is currently used by a range of Australian universities to assist in selection of international candidates to medical, dentistry, health sciences and veterinary science courses. Most of these courses require domestic applicants to sit a relevant aptitude test, such as the Undergraduate Medical Admissions Test. ISAT allows universities to apply the same rigorous admissions standards to international applicants through a test developed specifically for a culturally and linguistically diverse candidature.

The move to computer-based testing from 2010 will allow international students to take the test in locations and at dates and times that suit them. Candidates will pay to sit the test at secure, accredited Prometric test centres. Prometric has more than 4,000 test centres globally. Candidates may still have to travel to a test centre to sit the test, but there will be a greater number of centres in many countries, and more flexibility in test availability. Previously ISAT had been administered on fixed dates, often in examination rooms with a large cohort of candidates taking the test. There will no longer be mass sittings of the test. Instead, the computer-based system will allow individuals to attend a secure test centre, undergo an identity check, sit the test on a video-monitored computer, with the answers transmitted back to ACER through secure channels for marking.

ISAT will continue to be a useful predictor of student ability for use in the university selection process for international applicants, but with greater ease of use for candidates and universities, according to ACER’s ISAT Project Director Susan Nankervis.

“Computer-based administration of ISAT will be considerably more flexible for candidates in the choice of test dates and locations. This will improve equity in many countries by reducing the need for candidates to travel to take the test and allowing a wider exposure of candidates to the test,” she says.

“It will ensure the security of data, the confidentiality of the test and of candidates’ results, and it will reduce the carbon footprint of the test by eliminating the need to print test papers and to send them around the world.”

Candidates receive an electronic copy of their respective results, and results are also listed on a secure ACER database to be independently verified by Australian universities.

ISAT requires students to answer 100 multiple-choice questions in three hours. The questions measure critical reasoning drawing on material in the humanities and social sciences, and quantitative reasoning using material from science and mathematics. ISAT aims to test abilities that are considered important for coping with the intellectual demands of most tertiary courses. The emphasis is on thinking skills rather than curriculum specific knowledge and English-language proficiency.

Registrations for ISAT 2010 will open in March 2010. For more information, visit http://isat.acer.edu.au