Migration

Another rise in IELTS requirements – Registered Nurses

Article 2 taken from Immigration News (Volume 177):

It seems that the new national body looking after the registration process for nurses in Australia called the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia (NWBA) is now going to request 7.0 on the Academic IELTS test in order to process the registrations.
 
Here is yet another example of professional bodies seemingly determined to crush international students dreams of becoming permanent residents with little warning.
 
Most nursing students may be aware that if they do not pass the registration process they cannot pass the skill assessment requirement for migration applications. It used to be that each state was responsible to look after the registration process but from the 1st July it is the responsibility of the NWBA.
 
The Australian Nursing and Midwifery Council (ANMC) is a different organisation. They are accredited for the skill assessment for migration purposes. We are aware that they do accept letters from the university supporting applicants English instead of the IELTS level but that will be no use if applicants cannot obtain national registration as a nurse in the first place.

Migration

Back to the Future for the ACS

Article 1 taken from Immigration News (Volume 177):

After a couple of months of silence and seemingly not answering their enquiry lines, the Australian Computer Society (ACS) may be about to throw a lifeline to all the depressed overseas IT students in Australia. The new ACS assessment guidelines were released covering the basic requirements for the skill assessment for migration purposes under DIAC new SOL ANZSCO lists.
 
It would seem the ACS has stepped back in time when the skill assessment process began back in 2001. On the new ANZCO SOL there are five computer professional occupations;
 
ICT business analyst
Systems Analyst
Developer Programmer
Analyst Programmer
Software engineer
 
International Students completing Australian qualifications
 
There are a number of ways to pass an ACS assessment. For recent ICT graduates, the ACS will now examine the content of your programs and see if it is relevant to the occupations you are nominating from the new SOL. It would seem they will then give you a classification (hopefully) in one of the six occupations above. You can read the complete guidelines using the following link: www.acs.org.au/index.cfm?action=show&conID=skillassessment

These new rules will of course raise concern about what exactly is meant by relevant but at least it is more flexible than DIAC’s “closely related” term.