The Victorian Student Number and the Victorian Student Register
The VCAA works in partnership with education and training providers to ensure there are accurate records of students within the Victorian education system. Student records are held both by the provider, and also in the Victorian Student Register (VSR), a secure database managed by the VCAA under delegated authority from the Secretary of the Department of Education. The accuracy of each student record is enhanced by the allocation of a Victorian Student Number (VSN), a unique identifier given to each student in Victoria under 25 years of age for the purpose of monitoring and tracking students within the Victorian education system.
Education and training providers collect information from their students and provide it to the VSR either manually or automatically via a student management system. The information contained in the VSR for each Victorian student under 25 years of age includes:
- The student’s full name
- The student’s date of birth
- The student’s gender
- The date on which the student is enrolled at an education or training provider or registered for home schooling by the Victorian Registration and Qualifications Authority (VRQA)
- The date on which the student’s enrolment at an education or training provider or registration for home schooling is cancelled; and
- The records of changes which have been made to data.
Legislation
Part 5.3A of the
Education and Training Reform Act 2006 (Vic) establishes and governs the VSN and related information. The Act places responsibilities for collecting and maintaining VSN information on all education and training providers, which are defined as:
- A Victorian school (Government, Catholic or Independent)
- The VRQA (registers students for home schooling)
- Vocational education and training (VET) providers (for students under 25 years of age) including:
- TAFE institutes
- Registered Training Organisations (RTOs)
- Adult, community and further education (ACFE) providers (funded by the ACFE Board).
See
Secretary’s Guidelines on the Victorian Student Number for more information on the governance of the VSN and the role of education and training providers.
Legislative obligations
The Act requires that education and training providers meet notification obligations with regard to the collection and maintenance of student information, which is provided to the VSR. Personal student information is then paired with a VSN as a unique identifier for each student record.
The accuracy of the VSR is dependent on providers notifying the VSR of all updates to a VSN and related information including:
When a student is enrolled with an education or training provider, or registered for home schooling by the VRQA, the education or training provider applies to the VCAA, as the delegate of the Secretary, to allocate the student a VSN or to verify the student’s VSN if they have already been allocated one.
Notifications of enrolment to the VSR should include:
- Student personal details (full name, date of birth, gender)
- Any other applicable unique identifiers (such as the USI)
- Enrolment date
- If applicable, any access restrictions on the student (such as court orders prohibiting disclosure of the student’s information to certain parties)
- Enrolled Full Time Equivalent (FTE) status.
When a student enrols at a Victorian education or training provider for the first time, the VSR will register the student with their identifying information, and create a new VSN and enrolment record for the student.
If a student subsequently transfers to a new provider, the VSR will use the student’s VSN and related information to verify the student’s identity, after which it will create a new enrolment record for the student at the new provider.
When a student requires their VSN but cannot locate it, the VSR can be used to retrieve the VSN using the student’s identifying details which are matched to the stored VSN in the VSR.
There may be circumstances in which the personal information stored in the VSR needs to be updated, for example if a student changes their name. Education and training providers, as the collectors of student personal information, are responsible for maintaining its accuracy for the duration of the time a student has an active enrolment with them.
All student requests to update personal information held within the VSR should be made directly to the education or training provider where they are currently enrolled. The provider is able to check the veracity of these requests through direct contact with the student and/or their parent/guardian, which includes sighting any required legal identification document(s).
While different providers may enter amended personal information into the VSR by different methods, all updates, or changes to information from providers will be received in the VSR as system generated notifications (called ‘exceptions’) of the proposed change to a VSN record, which VCAA staff will review and action. If the request from the provider to update the personal information in the VSR is not straight forward, the VCAA may contact the provider to request further information, so that the record can be maintained appropriately.
As a key purpose of the VSN and related information is to track student progress, and data integrity is key to this process, the name on the VSR will be a student’s full name, as it appears on official identification documents such as a birth certificate or passport. Other names, such as preferred and anglicised names, will only be included if supported by an official identification document. Pseudonyms are not required on the VSR, as there are restrictions on who can the access, use and disclose the information, as well as information security and privacy protections in place to ensure student personal information and their identity is appropriately protected.
When a student leaves a provider, the provider needs to notify the VSR that the student has left education and training or moved providers.
If a student is transferring to another education or training provider, then the current provider should issue the student or parent/guardian with a VSN notification report which the student can then use for enrolment at the new provider.
In some instances, a student may be enrolled with an education or training provider, and the enrolment is notified to the VSR, but the student never attends the education or training they are enrolled in. This circumstance requires the enrolment to be cancelled. The provider then needs to notify the VSR of the student’s cancelled enrolment.
Disclosure
VSN related information is confidential, and needs to be treated by education and training providers with care. VSN information can generally only be shared with
authorised users, which includes some third parties who have a necessary reason to access the information, such as IT providers maintaining a school administration system holding VSN data (see
Secretary’s Guidelines on the Victorian Student Number for more detail), operating under appropriate privacy and data security arrangements.
Under the Act, education and training providers must share the relevant VSN and related information with students and their parents/guardian if requested. Further advice on this process can be found on the
Find out about student numbers webpage. As every student is entitled to know their VSN, providers may choose to proactively share the VSN on:
- Correspondence confirming student enrolment details
- Notifications of student transfers or exits
- Student VSN notifications (a report that provides students and parents/guardians with the information that was notified by the provider to the VSR)
- Student academic reports
- Student identification cards.
Although it can be helpful for a student to have easy access to their own VSN via the above conventional communications, the Act does not permit VSN information to be included in shared communications such as class lists or similar, which may be posted in a public space or sent digitally to multiple recipients.
Data quality
The quality of the data within the VSR is only as good as the information provided to it by education and training providers. The VCAA therefore relies on the diligence of providers, to not only ensure that student personal information provided to the VSR is correct, but that it is notified to the VCAA in a timely manner. To support education and training providers to fulfil their legislative mandate to supply accurate and up to date information to the VSR, the VCAA makes enquiries with providers on outstanding information that has not been submitted to VSR or requires further clarification.
It is important that the information in the VSR is accurate to ensure that student information is matched correctly when a student transitions between different education and training providers. The consequence of providing inaccurate data to the VSR is that the student identification and matching process will show an error with a record, which is known within the system as an ‘exception’.
To reduce data quality related exceptions, education and training providers are supported with technical guidance for data entry conventions when entering students’ identifying information in the
Victorian Student Register Data Quality Manual. If the data provided to the VSR by providers in accordance with the conventions specified in the Data Quality Manual, there are less system generated exceptions, which allows VCAA staff to support students with issues with their student record caused by other administrative processes or exceptional individual circumstances.
The VCAA is committed to working with providers to ensure that they are compliant with the Secretary’s expectations about the timely submission of accurate VSN information. This will ensure that all Victorian students always have correct VSN and related information recorded with their provider and within the VSR.
More information
If you have a query regarding the VSN you can contact the VCAA at
vsr@education.vic.gov.au