For teachers in NSW, the December-January period is a time for rest and rejuvenation. It is also the time in which a curious slip of paper shows up in your mailbox demanding you pay $100 to the NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) or else lose your job.

Another teacher chalks up another year ... and coughs up another $100 fee.

Mirroring a parking fine, "2019 calendar year fee: $100" is stamped in the middle of the page. Rather than explaining the purpose of the fee, there is instead a strongly worded paragraph referencing the Teacher Accreditation Act 2004 warning that failure to pay by the end of January will jeopardise your employment.

What is "accreditation"? I first sought an answer to this question from my superiors. The answer: spending hours upon hours creating an extensive Word document proving I knew how to teach. This document was to be written and compiled in my spare time (unpaid, of course) and had to follow the borderline indecipherable instructions contained in a 65-page PDF document.

This glorified document is what department lackeys call "A Personalised Learning Reflection". Accreditation is more a test of patience and unpaid labour than a reflective form of professional development. The annual fee constitutes part of this "Personalised Learning Reflection", although it remains to be seen how forking over a hundred bucks every January makes you a better teacher.