Australian Sailing is pleased to announce a significant upgrade to the re-accreditation requirements for accredited officials, giving most officials more ways to re-accredit and entirely removing the need for others to re-accredit.  

This upgrade reduces the barriers to re-accreditation and increases flexibility for officials and will improve retention of accredited officials. By making these changes, Australian Sailing is continuing to deliver on its Instructor, Coach and Official Development Strategy, a key focus of which is making accreditation more accessible. 

For officials holding one of our entry-level accreditations, re-accreditation is no longer required. This covers the following accreditations: 

• Club Equipment Auditor 
• Protest Committee Member 
• Race Officer – Mark Layer 
• Race Officer – Committee & Finish Boat 
• Race Officer – Introduction 

All other officials now have more ways to re-accredit: they can re-accredit by doing any one of the following three things: 

• Submitting an Event Log of their experience over the last four years (meeting certain criteria), or 
• Obtaining a Practical Assessment from another accredited official, or 
• Attending (or presenting) an Australian Sailing course in their discipline. 

This upgrade is all about adding options – no re-accreditation options have been removed for any discipline.  

To facilitate these changes and pave the way for further improvements to our Officiating program, Australian Sailing has updated its policy framework. Specifically, we’ve replaced each discipline’s Accreditation Policy with a combined Officials Accreditation Policy, and also replaced the Officials Feedback Policy with an Officials Complaints Policy. To read more about the new policies, click here. 

To find out more about accreditation and re-accreditation, visit the Officials Hub. 

By Michael Arnold.