Eligibility Information about Enrolling in and Completing a Professional Experience Placement

Professional Experience

All Teacher Education degrees require professional experience in a relevant educational setting for the enrolled course. Teacher education students. Teacher education students must ensure they have allowed for professional experience when creating their study plan by arranging time off work, ensuring care is arranged for children or other dependents, etc, and other external factors that may affect the quality of placement.

Before accepting a place at UNE, please consider these important requirements and familiarise yourself with the Professional Experience Policy.

The number of days to be completed for the particular professional experience placement unit in which a teacher education student is enrolled is indicated in the UNE Course Handbook.

When a teacher education student is enrolled in the unit with professional experience for their degree they will be given access to the PREXUS myLearn site as well as InPlace which manages your professional experience.

Eligibility to Undertake Professional Experience

Eligibility

The following are required for eligibility to undertake professional experience:

Professional Experience Policy 

Before accepting a place at UNE, please consider these important requirements and familiarise yourself with the Professional Experience Policy.

Mandatory Certificates

Students are required to meet the following for all professional experience placements, regardless of state, territory or degree offered by the School of Education. All students must complete:

  • a NSW Working with Children Check (WWCC) or equivalent interstate check.
  • ASCIA Anaphylaxis e-training (updated every two years)
  • the Child Protection Awareness Induction Training (CPAT) module
  • the Child Protection Update (completed yearly)

Please read the Mandatory requirements and checks, arranged by state or territory with links to the relevant agencies.

All mandatory certificates must be obtained and submitted to the Office for Professional Learning before placement begins. Please submit your forms through InPlace under the my details tab (the person icon).

Additional Placement Requirements for NSW

NSW students will also require for their final placement a paid WWCC before they begin. This number will have an 'E' at the end instead of the Volunteer WWCC which ends in a 'V'.

Teacher Education Students are required to obtain a Working With Children Check (WWCC),  or equivalent for the state in which they will be undertaking placement. Prior to undertaking your final placement you will need to hold a paid employment Working with Children Check.

Things to remember:

  • Once you have obtained your WWCC you will need to upload a copy of your card/letter to InPlace along with the number;
  • If your WWCC will expire before you have completed your placement, you will need to renew and re-upload the number and a copy of your card/letter to InPlace;
  • If you change from a volunteer to a paid WWCC, you will need to re-upload the amended number and a copy of your card/letter to InPlace.
Placements in Current place of Employment
School

If you are currently working in a school as a teacher with Conditional Accreditation, you may be a candidate for an In-Service placement. This means that rather than shadowing a supervising teacher as per a teacher education student, the school principal or their delegate completes an independent report based on teaching over a specified number of days for the required unit for teacher training. The school would need to verify that the teacher education student takes sole responsibility for the planning, teaching, and assessment of a class or classes and must work with the In-Service candidate on improving teaching skills and application of pedagogy. They must also verify the independence of the assessor. Considerations will need to be made regarding the two school rule.

Please also note, the final placement there are a few requirements that must be met for the satisfactory completion of your course during the final, Graduate Level placement. Please see the Final Placements and the Graduate Teaching Performance Assessment for more information.

Approval for In-Service placement is at the discretion of the Office for Professional Learning and will require certain documentation to be assessed. For more information regarding In-Service placements, please contact the Office for Professional Learning through AskUNE.

Early Childhood

Students who are enrolling in an Early Childhood Education (ECE) degree and are currently employed in an Early Childhood Setting may be able to complete placements in their current place of employment, providing: the centre agrees to the placement and it is approved by the Office for Professional Learning.

There are, however, some units where an ECE student will be required to complete placement outside of the centre (including any 'sister' centres) in which they are currently employed. Please use the Professional Experience Placement Guide for assistance when arranging study plans for professional experience and for more information.

Overseas Placement and Placement in 'Other Settings'
Overseas School-based placements

UNE Initial Teacher Education (ITE) degrees are accredited with the New South Wales Education Standards Authority (NESA), who state:

Providers require that [the] supervised teaching practice is undertaken mostly in a recognised Australian school setting over a substantial and sustained period that is relevant to an authentic classroom environment.

This means that professional placements must be undertaken in a school in Australia using New South Wales syllabuses or equivalent Australian Curriculum and be assessing teaching proficiency against the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers.

However, NESA acknowledges the benefits of completing placements in settings overseas and has allowed UNE to accept placements overseas if the placements can meet the following:

  • An overseas placement can count towards the minimum required professional experience days but cannot be the final professional experience placement in a program as the final placement must be in an Australian school in Australia.
  • The overseas placement will be part of a well-structured, well-designed professional experience program and is more likely to occur in the early stages of an initial teacher education program.
  • At least 50 percent of the minimum professional experience requirements for program accreditation must be in an Australian school setting, including the final professional experience placement.
  • The NESA Framework for High Quality Professional Experience in Schools and the Professional Experience – Common Report Template contained in it, will provide the basis of assessment in the overseas professional experience placement.

The Office for Professional Learning requires all placements in an overseas setting be in context with the degree of study, for example, a student studying to become a teacher of French completing a placement in France. Information will be required for submission to the Office for Professional Learning who will assess it for validity, acceptability and context to the degree of study.

The 50% rule means the courses requiring 80 days of professional experience can have a maximum of 40 days overseas or a maximum of 30 days overseas for the courses requiring 60 days, as long as the placement setting can meet the above requirements. The number of days completed in an overseas setting must be equivalent to the number of days required in a unit containing professional experience, e.g. a 20 day placement overseas will only be matched to a 20 day placement in a unit; completing 25 days in an overseas setting will not mean the additional five days will be applied to another unit.

Any student permitted to complete placement overseas will be required to meet that country's Working with Children Check equivalent and meet all other requirements for said country. If the country of placement does not have a Working with Children Check equivalent, UNE will require a statutory declaration to be completed.

Overseas Early Childhood-based placements

All professional experience placements in an Early Childhood Education and Care setting must meet the following requirements to be counted for placement.

The Early Childhood Education and Care setting must:

  • be a setting approved by ACECQA that caters for children prior to school age;
  • be using the Early Learning Years Framework.

A placement overseas in a setting that does not meet the above requirements will not be acceptable for a placement.