The Dean's reflection: March

Welcome to the second Dean’s Reflection. These monthly reflections are intended to support and advance shared understandings of education matters across the College, particularly for trainees and supervisors navigating the growing complexity of contemporary education and training.

Over recent weeks, I have had the opportunity to deepen my understanding of College activities across Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. During this time, I have learned a great deal about the excellent work being undertaken by College staff, as well as the very real challenges of balancing finite resources with growing expectations and demands. Managing resource capacity while continuing to deliver work that is both critical and strategically aligned remains an ongoing challenge for the College, and one that requires clarity of priorities and vision. The focus in the next 60 days will be on meeting those working in Branches and Tū Te Akaaka Roa, the National Office in New Zealand.

In this month’s reflection, I want to focus on two developments, one reflective of the complex and uncertain world we live in and the other concerning the work of the New Fellowship Program Taskforce that is innovative and future facing.

A little over a week ago on 20 March 2026, as some of you may know, there was a technical examination failure at one of the 12 sites where trainees were undertaking the MCQ exam. Specifically, water damage caused a server failure at the Sydney site, interrupting the exam for just over two hours before trainees could recommence. The events caused considerable distress for trainees who study hard towards exams, make considerable sacrifices and rightfully expect the systems to work. I would like to acknowledge the human cost of the distress and having heard the lived trainee stories recognise how challenging these issues are.

In an increasingly complex technical environment, such failures, while unacceptable, are not unprecedented. For example, just last month the RCPsych in the UK experienced a significant exam technical failure. While the responsibility for the delivery of the exam sits largely with our contractor, there is an important responsibility that rests with the College as well. Critically we also have a responsibility to remedy the situation in a professional and ethical manner. Put simply, we may not be able to control what happens on the day, but we can respond in the manner that our trainees and Fellows expect. In this regard I am grateful to College staff on the day who implemented the contingency plans to ensure disruption was minimised and trainees were able to resit the examination after a necessary break.

As Dean, on my appointment last year I made a promise to trainees to ensure that we communicate more effectively, reduce the burden of assessment and address wellbeing issues. This MCQ issue cuts across all three areas. There is always more we can do and as such I want to assure you that we will learn from this and trainees will not be disadvantaged as a consequence.

The two central questions we seek to answer going forward are firstly, how can the situation be managed fairly and, secondly, how we can assure that the system is trustworthy. To ensure a proportionate response, we have agreed following a meeting of the Committee for Examinations on 25 March, led by Prof Kane Vellar, that any fail grade from the Sydney centre will be annulled and refunded. This was communicated to impacted trainees last week in a prompt manner. To ensure trustworthiness, a review of our exam partners will be undertaken. As part of our response we met directly with those who were affected and the NAPT NSW leaders who commendably advocated for the trainees. Reflecting on this unfortunate event, I hope the silver lining is we can work more closely together and our exam system becomes more resilient.

In the spirit of working together, I would like to reflect on the New Fellowship Program Taskforce intensive that concluded last week. As Dean, my role has been to support and will be to steward this work, while the Taskforce, under its Chair’s leadership drives the conceptual design. Led by A/Prof Simon Stafrace, a diverse group of representatives worked on the task of coming up with the education architecture for the 2030 Fellowship during a highly productive 2 day face to face intensive. The trainee voice was front and centre and we had rich contributions from our lived experience and Indigenous partners. These were enormously powerful as we tightened the vision and capabilities of the psychiatrists of the future, and then translated this into a sequence of educational activities and an assessment program to ensure a curriculum could be developed to deliver on the vision. Key to success will be flexibility, innovation and education coherence to the curriculum architecture. These early plans were presented to the Board and will be shared and refined through ongoing consultation.

Reflecting on where we are at in the Kern model of curriculum renewal and hearing from leaders in the field such as the Chief Medical Officer, Chief Psychiatrist and President of the AMC, our sense is we are developing a curriculum that is ground breaking and ambitious. One that prepares future psychiatrists to thrive, meets future needs, delivers a socially accountable curriculum, and provides leadership across healthcare systems more broadly. Please do follow the updates from the Chair of the New Fellowship Program Taskforce in his regular column.

I look forward to engaging as many of you as possible in ongoing education conversations. Thank you for your continued commitment to teaching and learning at a time of increasing educational complexity, clinical pressure, and system demand. If we adopt a learning and growth mindset to the collective problems we encounter we will be stronger as a psychiatry education community of practice. Please do reach out at education@ranzcp.org to continue the dialogue.

Warm regards,

Prof Andrew Teodorczuk

Executive Dean of Education