Nationally or Interstate Assessed Languages (NIAL)

  • 2024 NIAL written and oral exam assessment dates – TBA

2024 applications open Tuesday, 30 January and close Friday, 22 March.

Year 11 and 12 students can apply to study nationally or interstate assessed language courses, as well as the locally assessed TASC language courses being provided by Tasmanian schools. The nationally assessed courses are developed on the Collaborative Curriculum and Assessment Framework for Languages (CCAFL).

The nationally or interstate assessed languages (NIAL) are Level 3 courses and are best suited to learners who already have strong skills in reading. writing and speaking a language, either as a background speaker or having extensively studied the language as a second language. These courses require that a learner have at least 200 hours of instruction in the language.

Language courses:
Nationally assessed language coursesInterstate assessed language coursesInterstate assessed course provider
ArmenianArabic (second language)VCAA
AuslanChinese (background speakers)SACE
BengaliJapanese (first language)VCAA
BosnianKorean (first language)VCAA
Chin HakhaModern Greek (continuers)SACE
Chinese in ContextSpanish (continuers)VCAA
CroatianVietnamese (first language)VCAA
Dutch
Filipino
Hebrew
Hindi
Hungarian
Japanese in Context
Karen
Khmer
Korean in Context
Macedonian
Malay (background speakers)
Nepali
Persian
Polish
Portuguese
Punjabi
Romanian
Russian (continuers)
Serbian
Sinhala
Swedish
Tamil
Turkish
Yiddish

TASC language courses (locally assessed)

Please note that this is not the full list of interstate-assessed languages available to Tasmanian students, these are only examples of frequently requested languages. Please contact TASC if you have a student interested in sitting the exams for a language that is not listed.

Resources from the NIAL professional learning session held on 23 February 2023:

NIAL professional learning PowerPoint slides

NIAL professional learning information sheet

Schools who have a student who wishes to study for the exam in one of the national or interstate languages need to complete an application through TRACS for the student, using the Nationally & Interstate Assessed Languages (NIAL) Administration task.

 

The learning is self-directed and students may receive support through their school. Course documents are sourced from other Australian assessment agencies and administered according to their specifications.

There are no internal assessments for these courses during the year with the course results based on external assessment. Depending on the language chosen, learners may complete an oral exam as well as a written exam. These exams are held in October-November. Learners who are not present for the external assessment will not receive an award as there are no derived ratings available.

The course awards available are:

  • Exceptional Achievement (EA)
  • High Achievement (HA)
  • Commendable Achievement (CA)
  • Satisfactory Achievement (SA)
  • Preliminary Achievement (PA).

An award of PA (or higher achievement) will contribute 15 credit points towards the Tasmanian Certificate of Education (TCE). An award of SA or higher will contribute towards the Australian Tertiary Admissions Rank (ATAR) for eligible students.

Please contact TASC on 6165 6000 if you have any queries.

If there is a language that you would like to study that is not currently listed, please contact TASC at enquiries@tasc.tas.gov.au