Table of Contents
Training and assessment strategies do not reflect information contained in marketing material:
The information contained in your TAS’s needs to be consistent with the information you are marketing on your website and other marketing material. Details around course durations; course descriptions; attendance / participation requirements; entry requirements or selection criteria should be accurate in both sources. ASQA often finds non-compliances at audit and with applications for additions to scope in evidence submitted as RTOs can fail to pay attention to details with this critical data. Remember your websites are publicly available and can be accessed by ASQA at any time.
Failure to ensure trainers are maintaining their profiles:
Some RTOs make assumptions that their trainers are current because they are working in industry or appear to be undertaking professional development regularly however, they fall down because they don’t sufficiently document these activities systematically and on a consistent basis. In an audit ASQA wants to see a documented analysis e.g. mapping of how your trainers / assessors meet industry currency requirements for each unit of competency they are delivering. If you don’t have a process in place to document these requirements at the unit of competency level you will not satisfy the requirements of the relevant clauses in the SRTOs 2015. Remember mapping should be at least at the element level for each unit to demonstrate that the maintenance of currency has addressed all the requirements.
Assessment tools do not meet the requirements of the unit of competency:
Not having a process in place to validate / quality check assessment tools pre-use puts your RTO at potential risk of non-compliances as you have not determined if your assessment tools are fit for purpose and meet the requirements of the specific unit of competency. If you implement these resources without conducting this due diligence you could be impacting on student and industry outcomes and be deemed critically non-compliant in an audit.
Assessment tasks have insufficient instructions for students and assessors:
Assessors cannot collect sufficient evidence from students if assessment task instructions are vague and unclear. This in turn can impact on marking; recordkeeping and overall reliability of the assessors judgement. Instructions in assessment tasks need to be specific as possible. Benchmark answers and marking guides should be explicit and not be open to interpretation by assessors.
No benchmark answers or marking guides for assessment tasks:
If you do not have benchmark answers or marking guides for your assessors to refer to when making their judgements you cannot ensure your assessor is meeting the rules of evidence. Your assessors practices will not be consistent without these critical documents to refer to.