Enrolment Registration Number (Ern) System

Executive, 23 June 2008, EX77/08

"That the PSA Executive agrees to support a member ban on the ERN System should the issues of concern not be able to be resolved in talks between the PSA and the Department of Education and Training."

The Department of Education and Training recently developed and installed a new computer system into Schools. The system is meant to enable student details to be entered when they join the public school system and then their information can follow them to any school (or TAFE) in NSW. The PSA was consulted throughout the development of the system however our advice, particularly around training, was not accepted.

Our members are becoming increasingly frustrated with the new system and there have been widespread complaints about training (or lack of it) and operational problems. The Association informed the DET that our members wanted to ban use of the new system.

An urgent meeting was convened between the Deputy Director General, the Information Technology Directorate and the PSA. It was resolved that further discussions between the industrial relations directorate, the information technology directorate and PSA representatives would occur and that the PSA would not impose a ban until after that meeting was held.

In addition, the PSA has sent a survey to all schools to gain details of members concerns and to determine how widespread the concerns are. The responses to the survey are unprecedented. There have been 1,400 surveys returned so far and they are still arriving. These surveys demonstrate the level of concerns of our members.

Many of the concerns relate to the inadequacy of the training. The DET revealed in our meeting that treasury had not funded the project sufficiently to spend more on training. Only $20,000 was spent in each region to train administrative staff in 2,240 schools in NSW on a completely new system.

At the subsequent meeting with DET and PSA representatives it was decided that the training manual and help screens would be reviewed; a working group would be established with administrative staff representatives (nominated by the PSA) to look at the operational issues; information would be sought from members about standard reports which the DET should provide and the DET will look at their communications issues.

Previous report.