Hello and welcome to VET News,
There are a couple of things happening at the moment which are worth noting.
Suspension on new CRICOS applications
The first is the Australian Government’s temporary suspension on new CRICOS applications. This is a government decision under the ESOS Act. It affects new CRICOS provider registration applications and applications to add new courses to an existing CRICOS registration. The suspension commenced on 19 May 2026 and will run for 12 months. ASQA has described the measure as targeted and time-limited. It has also linked the decision to integrity concerns, including risks associated with non-genuine and poor-quality providers and concentrated growth in some course areas. I really do feel for those providers that have been working toward an application and have been cut out without notice. We ceased CRICOS registration as a service over 12 months ago, so thankfully none of our active clients were affected.
This is a significant intervention into international education, which is now caught between quality regulation and migration policy. Both sides of politics are under pressure to reduce migration, and student visas are one of the most obvious levers available to government. This ongoing constraint is going to make international education very challenging, and providers will need to keep evolving to find new markets, either domestically or offshore. They will also need to make hard decisions sooner rather than later. That may mean closing delivery sites, reducing overheads, reviewing staffing levels, cutting courses from scope that are not attracting enrolments, and walking away from parts of the business that no longer make sense. That is painful, but pretending the market has not changed is worse. The providers that get through this period will be the ones that reshape their business to fit the conditions in front of them.
There are some great genuine providers in this sector and to them, I would simply say this: now is the time to make clear-eyed decisions. Protect the parts of the business that are working, stop carrying the parts that are not, and keep enough capacity to move when the market shifts again. At some point, government will need to come back to the role international education plays in skilled migration and productivity. Until then, providers need to stay viable.
Statement of Regulatory Expectations
The second development is ASQA’s recent Statement of Regulatory Expectations on fit and proper person requirements and notification of material changes. This is worth reading. These requirements are not new. Fit and proper person requirements and material change notification obligations have been part of the regulatory framework for many years. What is new is the emphasis. ASQA is making it very clear that honesty, disclosure and sound governance are not optional. They go directly to whether the regulator can have confidence in an RTO. In our work, we occasionally see providers get this badly wrong. Sometimes the original compliance issue is not the worst problem. The bigger problem is how the provider responds to it.
If a governing person knowingly gives inaccurate information to the regulator, or allows documents to be presented as genuine when they are not, the matter becomes an integrity issue. Once the regulator cannot rely on what an RTO says, the provider has a much harder problem to fix. You can rectify a policy gap. You can update an assessment tool. But loss of trust is much harder to repair. I constantly reinforce this with clients. The information you give the regulator needs to be accurate. You can present it in the most positive light available, but it still needs to be true. Every CEO will face moments where this matters. My advice is always the same: come down on the side of truth. It will serve you better than the alternative. I have seen people labelled by the national regulator as someone the community “cannot have confidence in” because they lied in evidence presented during a performance assessment. It is just not worth it.
The same principle applies to material changes. A material change does not always mean the RTO has done something wrong. Often, it just means something has happened. A delivery site becomes unavailable. A contract changes. A key staff member leaves. That is business. The question is not whether the provider can avoid every problem, it is whether the provider recognises the issue, assesses the risk, keeps records, and tells ASQA when the matter may affect its ability to meet the Standards. My default advice is simple. If the issue may affect your ability to comply with the Standards, notify ASQA.
Over many years, I have not seen honest and early notification cause harm to an RTO. I have seen the opposite. Early notification gives the regulator context. It shows the provider is awake, organised and acting responsibly. Late notification is different. The issue is no longer just what happened. The issue becomes why the provider did not tell the regulator when it knew, or should have known, that the matter was significant. That is where providers get themselves into trouble. So, if in doubt, let them know.
One last thing, if you have not yet registered for ASQAs 2026 sector webinar, registration still seems to be open. You can register at the following link:
ASQA Sector Webinar
Good training,
Joe Newbery
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