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Record of School Achievement
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The NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) issues the Record of School Achievement (RoSA) to eligible students who leave school before completing the Higher School Certificate (HSC).
The RoSA is a cumulative credential, meaning it contains a student’s record of academic achievement up until the date they leave school. This could be between the end of Year 10 up until and including some results from Year 12.
The RoSA records completed Stage 5 (Year 10) and Preliminary Stage 6 (Year 11) courses and grades, HSC (Year 12) results, and where applicable participation in any uncompleted Preliminary Stage 6 courses or HSC courses.
The RoSA is useful to students leaving school prior to the HSC because they can show it to potential employers or places of further learning.
The RoSA is also available to students who, from 2020, have not demonstrated the HSC minimum standard to receive their HSC.
More information about the RoSA:
- Eligibility for the RoSA
- Receiving the RoSA
- RoSA reporting and grades
- Life Skills
- Students who don’t qualify for a RoSA
- School attendance
- ‘N’ determinations
- What happened to the School Certificate?
Eligibility for a RoSA
To be eligible for a RoSA, students must have:
- Completed the mandatory curriculum requirements for Years 7 to 10.
- Attended a government school, an accredited non-government school or a recognised school outside NSW.
- Completed courses of study that satisfy Education Standards’ curriculum and assessment requirements for the RoSA.
- Complied with the requirements from the Education Act.
Receiving the RoSA
Schools are responsible for requesting a RoSA through the enrolments section in Schools Online. Once this has been completed, we will send a PDF of the RoSA to student’s Students Online account. Students cannot directly request a RoSA themselves.
Schools are able to generate an eRecord and check the student’s course information is correctly recorded. This online eRecord can be used as an interim result report until the formal RoSA credential is delivered to the student’s Students Online account.
At any time, all students in Years 11 and 12 can access an online eRecord to provide potential employers when seeking casual work via their Students Online account.
Students who remain at school to complete their HSC will not receive a RoSA.
View examples of RoSA credentials
Transferring schools
A RoSA is not issued to students if they are transferring schools. Transferring students are managed between schools. It is the school’s responsibility to inform us of a student’s arrival by updating the student’s details within Schools Online during the enrolments process.
RoSA reporting and grades
The RoSA shows a student’s comprehensive record of academic achievement, which includes:
- completed courses and the awarded grade or mark
- courses a student has participated in but did not complete before leaving school
- results of any minimum standard literacy and numeracy tests that may have been sat
- date the student left school.
It includes an A to E grade for all Stage 5 (Year 10) and Preliminary Stage 6 (Year 11) courses, the student has satisfactorily completed.
Grades are:
- based on student achievement in their assessment work
- submitted to us by the school in Term 4
- monitored by us for fairness and consistency.
We work with teachers to ensure appropriate standards for grading and assessment are developed and applied. This ensures that grades awarded in one school are equivalent to the same grades awarded in another school.
We also provide schools with information about the historical allocation or patterns of grades awarded by that school over recent years. This helps guide the allocation of grades to current students.
View examples of RoSA credentials
Successful completed Vocational Educational and Training (VET) and Life Skills course are reported differently to graded courses.
Life Skills
Students with disability can complete the Life Skills curriculum option.
Students who leave school before completing their HSC, but who have satisfactorily completed Year 11 or Year 10 Life Skills courses, can receive a RoSA.
For every satisfactorily completed Life Skills course an accompanying Profile of Student Achievement is included with the RoSA to provide students with more details of their achievements from each course.
Students who don’t qualify for a RoSA
Students who leave school before finishing Year 10 are not eligible for a RoSA. If students leave after Year 10 and still don’t meet RoSA requirements they will be issued with a Transcript of Study.
The Transcript of Study contains the same information as the RoSA for courses satisfactorily completed.
Schools must let us know when a student leaves school via Schools Online.
While formal RoSA credentials are for school leavers, all Years 11 and 12 students will be able to access their cumulative academic results, the courses they are enrolled in and print an eRecord via their Students Online account.
School attendance
We don’t set minimum attendance for the satisfactory completion of a course. However, a principal may determine that, due to absence, course completion criteria may not be met.
To receive a RoSA, students must attend school until the final day of Year 10.
They must also complete the following mandatory Years 7-10 curriculum requirements.
- English: Our syllabus must be studied substantially throughout Years 7–10. By the end of Year 10, 400 hours need to be completed.
- Mathematics: Our syllabus must be studied substantially throughout Years 7–10. By the end of Year 10, 400 hours need to be completed.
- Science: Our syllabus must be studied substantially throughout Years 7–10. By the end of Year 10, 400 hours need to be completed.
- Human Society and its Environment: Our syllabus must be studied substantially throughout Years 7–10. By the end of Year 10, 400 hours need to be completed. This must include 100 hours each of History and Geography in each Stage.
- Languages Other than English: 100 hours to be completed in one language over one continuous 12-month period between Years 7–10 but preferably in Years 7–8.
- Technological and Applied Studies: Our Technology (mandatory) Years 7–8 syllabus to be studied for 200 hours.
- Creative Arts: Two hundred hours to be completed, consisting of our 100-hour mandatory courses in each of Visual Arts and Music. We expect that the 100-hour mandatory courses in these subjects will be taught as coherent units of study and not split over a number of years.
- Personal Development, Health and Physical Education: Our mandatory 300-hour course to be completed. This integrated course is to be studied in each of Years 7–10.
‘N’ determinations
If students don’t complete a course’s requirements they will receive an ‘N’ determination.
Students are warned via a letter from their school if it looks like they might receive an ‘N’ determination. This aims to give the student time to complete the course requirements and rectify the problem.
If a student receives an ‘N’ determination in a mandatory curriculum requirement course, they won’t be eligible for the RoSA. If they leave school, they will receive a Transcript of Study that will list the mandatory course(s) that received an ‘N’ determination.
If a student is given an ‘N’ determination in a non-mandatory course, the course will not appear on their RoSA or Transcript of Study.
Principals need to contact us if they feel a student is eligible for a RoSA after being deemed ineligible at the end of Year 10 because they failed to meet the mandatory curriculum requirements.
What happened to the School Certificate?
In 2011, the NSW Government announced the abolition of the School Certificate, a credential that had existed since 1965.
It also announced that, for students choosing to leave school before the completion of their HSC, the School Certificate would be replaced by a broader, cumulative record of achievement.
The RoSA replaced the School Certificate in 2012.
It’s important that employers understand that the RoSA is cumulative so it reports everything a student has completed from the end of year 10 up until the date they left school.
This differs to the School Certificate where only achievements until the end of year 10 were reported.