Newbery Consulting Newbery Consulting Newbery Consulting

VET News

Thursday 30th of January 2025

Hello and welcome to VET News,

Welcome back to everyone. I do hope that you were able to take a break before we get back into a very busy year. Just a reminder to everyone that we have a number of important mandatory reports that are due within the next month including the declaration of compliance which executive officers should be receiving soon and of course the national vet data report (AVETMISS report) Which is due by the 28th of February. If you have not already done so it is worth starting to run some trial reports to identify any errors that need to be fixed prior to the report being due. I know our staff at RTO Data Cloud have been working back and forth with clients already this year which is great. Do not leave this report to the last minute and make sure you get a confirmation back from the NCVER that the report was successfully submitted. Last year we had a number of training organisations reach out to us for support because they received a clean validation report and confused this with thinking that the data was submitted. Unless you have the confirmation email from the NCVER then the data is not submitted.

There is going to be a lot of information flying around in the next six months leading up to the revised standards coming into force on the 1st of July 2025. We will make sure that we include all of the relevant information from the various departments in VET News as well as the information that we will be publishing on our website to support clients with their implementation. In our consulting work with clients, we are already having ongoing and constant discussions about their current level of compliance and what we need to be thinking about with the new standards. There is a lot that has not changed but there is also a number of new requirements that are going to significantly change the way training organisations are regulated.

To be honest there are a lot, but if I were to identify just three, I would point to the following:

  • Standards 1.1 (Training) – This standard relates to the quality of the training being delivered. The very significant change is to move away from a quantitative focus on the number of hours allocated to training try more qualitative value of the training structure and the training techniques being implemented. Personally, I love it. I can honestly say that I think this is probably one of the best changes to standards that I have experienced in the last 20 years. I really do think that this is going to have a positive impact on the quality of VET. There is a need to make sure that students are provided the opportunity to receive instruction from trainers with feedback, students have the opportunity to practice and develop their skills prior to assessment. The standard talks about the need for training techniques to be applied in activities and for training to be paced so that students have time to acquire the skills and develop these before assessment.
  • Standard 2.3 (training support and Standard 3.1 VET Workforce) – these two combined standards imposed a significant requirement on the training organisation to make sure that students have access to trainers to get the training support that they need according to the mode of delivery. There is also a requirement for the training organisation of demonstrate how it has ensured that the number of trainers and assessors and other staff is appropriate for the delivery of services. This has the potential to be quite subjective, but it puts in place a very specific requirement to make sure that particularly the trainer and student ratio is appropriate for the type of training being delivered and the mode of delivery. I can see that this will particularly target courses where there are large groups of students undertaking practical skills training with insufficient time allocated. A great example is first aid training which I think we all can agree is pretty much a national joke. First aid is really a pretty complex unit of competency with a combination of complex knowledge and skill and we regularly see training organisations training 15 to 20 students in six hours with one trainer. Obviously, the problem is first aid is a very low margin service to deliver and we can only hope that if these standards are regulated properly then we might see a lift in quality and what the customer is willing to pay across the board. It may not seem obvious right now just simply reading these new standards, but I can see that with proper auditor moderation, these changes to the standards are going to give the regulator the mechanism to require organisations to either improve or leave the sector.
  • Quality Area 4 (Governance) – When I look at the new requirements for governance, I can see how this is really just a formalisation of how the national regulator has been regulating for pretty much the last two years . There is an overt focus on the responsibility of the executive officer and their invested authority to ensure that they are proactively managing the RTO and are accountable for the delivery of quality services. There is also very specific requirements that basically require active management forums and arrangements to enable clear lines of accountability and decision making. My favourite is standard 4.4 (a) which requires the organisation to implement a system for monitoring and evaluating its performance against the standards. I think we can officially say that ASQA are a little gun shy of using the words “self-assurance”. It took only one politician to confuse “self-assurance” with meaning “self-regulation” and the game was up. Anyway, that is exactly what standard 4.4 requires “self-assurance”. This will need to include a system of quality controls and quality reviews working in a coordinated way to constantly identify areas where the organisation is not meeting the standards and opportunities for improvement. Standard 4.3 Imposes a requirement for the use of a risk based approach to identify, manage and review risks to students, staff and the RTO. By “RTO” I would take this to mean that you are really going to need to have a very fundamental risk analysis and risk management plan across all your compliance requirements.

So, you can see that there are some fundamental changes and some of this stuff is going to require lots of support and discussion and communication to get a proper understanding. I do honestly think that some small and medium sized training organisations are going to need to get a lot more sophisticated and organised in the way that they manage their operation. I think that you will either need to gear up or your time in the VET sector is probably limited by years until the regulator catches up with you. I know that sounds harsh, but I think it’s what people need to hear. The days of people being apathetic about the quality of the service they deliver, or their compliance are definitely coming to an end. Of course, this all depends on how rigorously the national regulator implements and regulates against these new standards.

We will be publishing a lot more information on the rollout of the new standards so, stay tuned and feel free to invite others to join in and subscribe to VET News.

https://newberyconsulting.com.au/subscribe-to-vet-news/

Good training,

Joe Newbery

Compliance & Regulatory News

Other VET News

Reports, Articles, Papers and Research

Training Package Updates

Upcoming Events

Back to Articles

Webinar Series

Recent News

Recent Posts

Yada

© 2025 Newbery Consulting