3 Top Non-Compliances at an ASQA Audit

Most RTOs may know that they are non-compliant, but they just don’t know how non-compliant they are…

ASQA have identified these 3 top non-compliances many times since their inception in 2011, with RTOs consistently failing to meet the requirements of the standards and putting their RTO at risk.

In this episode Angela covers “The 3 Top Non-Compliances at ASQA Audit”, as identified by ASQA, and provide guidance on how to address them prior to being audited.

In this episode :

• Discover the non-compliances and how to avoid them within your RTO
• How to address the non-compliances
• How to be prepare for your next ASQA Audit
• Why it is important to have a continuous improvement approach to compliance
• The highs and lows of running an RTO
• The importance of ensuring your Training and Assessment Strategy is up to date
• The structure of your Training and Assessment Strategy
• The common mistakes found at audit

If you would like to learn more about the 3 top mistakes, you may be interested in reading Angela's ebook

Transcript

Angela Connell: 0:47

In this episode, I'll be covering the top three non compliances asked for audit. And this is based on our experience of working within artios and assisting them through their escort audits. Most artios may know that they are non compliant, but they just don't know how non compliant they are. As far as identify these three top non compliances many times since its inception in 2011, with RTO is constantly failing to meet the requirements of the standards and putting the RTO at risk. We'll be covering today the top three non compliances that ask audit as identified by a squat and provide you with guidance on how to address them prior to being audited. So let's look at what these are so the top three non compliances. In my capacity as CEO of diversity, I have been coaching and consulting the training industry since 2009. Prior to that, I owned and operated my own RTO. And I had a rather large scope of registration, we had over 35 qualifications on the scope. We had 40 trainers and assessors and 15 training rooms up and down the coast of New South Wales. So it was quite a B RTO. During this time, and when I've been working with artios, my team and I have experienced the highs and lows of running an RTO. And as you may guess, an escort audit is generally the lowest, most frustrating and time consuming part, which is why I have done this podcast. And the whole reason why we do the RTO superhero. Following is a snapshot of the three top non compliances that have not only been identified by our squad, but what we have experienced with our clients firsthand during audits, both internal audits and asked for audits. running an RTO is hard work but can seem even harder when you need to provide evidence of compliance and an adequate audit. So let us identify how you can minimize the risk of non compliance at your next x ESCO audit. So number one is training and assessment strategies. Having an effective training and assessment strategy that truly reflects your delivery and assessment is crucial within your RTO. Your TAs is not just an audit tool, it is your roadmap for how your RTO strategically delivers their training and assessment based on the data that they have collected to address industry and student needs. I'm going to cover today the key requirements of Utah's and how to write a tool that is not only compliant, but will provide a guide to you You and your trainers and the industry on how you deliver and assess. The second one is trainers and assessors any RTO would know it is crucial to have industry experienced trainers who are passionate about learning. But unfortunately, ensuring that your trainers meet the requirements of the standards is a consistent non compliance due to the lack of understanding of the evidence required. I'll be covering today, the components of a staff matrix and what trainers must do to ensure that currency within both the vocational education and training sector, but also in their industry sector. The third one is assessment tools. Our scores identified that the most common non compliance and audit is assessment tools. The implementation of compliant assessment tools is vital for ensuring that students are assessed as possessing all required skills and knowledge. I'll be covering the common cases and the causes of non compliances with assessment tools, and what you can do to improve your assessment tools. So let's begin training and assessment strategies. The core purpose of a task is to provide a roadmap to how you wish to deliver or how you are delivering your training and assessment. This document should be the core document of your RTO as it provides trainers with a framework of why and how you want the training to be delivered and provides other team members with a strategy for the training and assessment practices. Unfortunately, from our experience, it is also the most neglected document within an RTO. Insufficient framework r square has identified that a common issue when auditing a task is that the RTO is not providing an accurate or sufficiently detailed framework for the delivery of their training and assessment. The framework should include the core components of a task that identifies the structure of your training and assessment including the units that form the training based on industry consultation and the requirements of the training product. It identifies Who are your target audience and how your training will meet their individual needs. It includes the mode of delivery, including blended delivery with details of the reasoning behind the delivery strategy includes the minimum entry requirements to enter the training, taking into account the target audience and entry industry requirements. The duration of the training and how delivery taking into account the amount of training and volume are learning and meeting the requirements. The resources required for training and assessment including physical resources assessment, human resources and learning resources. Industry consultation is also a component that is often not sufficiently covered within hours. In particular, how the RTO has addressed industry feedback. The feedback you received from industry should be the core structure of your TAs, the reason why you're delivering the training, what needs are you meeting? Who is your target audience? How have you address the skill shortages and gaps and adjusted the training to meet the industry needs. Additionally, the task needs to be written in a way that allows a reader to understand how training is delivered, what resources are used for delivery, when assessment occurs, and what resources are used for assessment. If there is a work placement on the job component, the task will also need to detail what resources are required in the workplace, who is an appropriate supervisor in the workplace, and how often the assessor will conduct site visits. ters does not identify the target needs target audience needs. The town should address Who are your target audience? What are their learning and support needs and how you will deliver your training and assessment to meet those needs. A common mistake we have seen during our own audits is that the Taz includes a wide and varied audience and is not targeted to who is the target audience. It has may include audiences that are conflicting, for example, new entrants and existing workers. If there are different learner cohorts in the same training, the tag should include how the training assessment will meet both learner cohort needs. Practices do not align with the TAs artios delivery and assessment practices do not align with the training and assessment strategies. This is usually because the towers is often the last document to be updated, or is only updated when a planned ask order is scheduled. This should not be the case. Your tag should not be a static document, it should be the first document that is updated before changing your delivery and assessment methods. Each strategy must be regularly updated to ensure that they reflect the actual training and assessment being delivered. We recommend that your tasks should be reviewed and updated at least annually to ensure that your task has been updated with current feedback from industry and your training is adjusted to address the feedback and industry needs. Updates should include changes like to training packages in industry requirements, legislation, with technology and techniques being used by industry, the availability of resources. All of your marketing includes your cluding your website costs, flyers and social media should be consistent with your talents. A good strategy is to provide the updated terms to the person responsible for marketing to ensure that your marketing is in line with what is included within your tears. Another area of non compliance within a TAS is unduly short hours. Ask us strategic reviews identified that there was significant evidence of unduly short hours allocated to training, which is the amount of training that is delivered being significantly shorter than that required to ensure the students gain the competencies specified within the training product. The standards include volume of learning and amount of training, which often gets confusing. The difference between the two is the volume of learning is the total amount of hours to deliver an assess the training, including self paced hours, amount of time to complete assessment, work placement and online learning. Whereas the amount of training is just that the amount of training that the students received in order to learn the skills and knowledge within the unit, including the opportunity to apply the skills practically within the training Test superhero. We have a test superhero, which is a course that you can take. That includes eight modules and it's delivered online, and it covers everything you need to know in order to take the tension and stress out of your training and assessment strategy, and makes it so much easier to understand the requirements of your training and assessment strategy. Number two trainers and assessors, trainers and assessors are the core of your RTO as they are the client facing component of your organization. So it is very important that you ensure that your trainers have sufficient skills and knowledge to meet your training needs. From my experience, the ideal trainer is passionate about the industry loves to share their knowledge and is patient with teaching skills. Their experience in delivering training is not only not as important as the above, it is their passion and their ability to share that makes them an outstanding trainer. The standards specify that trainers and assessors are required to be skilled vet practitioners with current skills and knowledge within the industry sector. This ensures that your students are receiving training and assessment that is relevant to the industry and are meeting the requirements of the training product. We have experienced from a number of audits that trainers are often lacking in industry currency. That currency and their staff matrix does not reflect how their skills and knowledge are relevant to the units that they deliver. Another area is industry currency. The most common concern raised audit relating to industry currency is trainers and assessors. Current industry skills and knowledge are either not demonstrated within the staff matrix or is insufficient against the units they are delivering. ensuring that your trainers are maintaining their currency is very important not only as a compliance requirement, but as a student satisfaction and business growth requirement. The expectation at audit is that your trainers will have had experience working in the industry within the last three years. Which means that your trainers are maintaining their currency on an annual basis to ensure that they have hands on currency within their industry. Although the standards do not stipulate how trainers maintain their currency, it is the responsibility of the RTO to to retain evidence that demonstrate the trainers currency. This includes evidence of how the trainer has upgraded upskilled develop new skills and maintain the industry skills and knowledge. Evidence of China's knowledge that directly relates to the training and assessment that they are delivering. Currency can be through a range of evidence and these include volunteer work, paid employment, undertaking further training in their industry sector, completing professional development training within their industry sector, reading publications and industry journals from their sector, keeping informed of the latest tools, technology and techniques within their industry. Being a member of industry associations and networks, keeping up to date with legislative changes within the industry, being involved with skill service organizations and training package development and industry engagement. Another area with trainers and assessors is their vet currency. The most common concern raised or ordered relating to vet currency is that trainers and assessors have undertaken development activities to ensure that they maintain knowledge and skills of current training and assessment practices. Currently, the standards do not prescribe a minimum standard for maintaining currency. However, it is the artios responsibility to ensure that their trainers are maintaining their currency within the VET sector. There are a range of strategies you could implement to demonstrate currency. And these include maintain a professional development register, undertake annual performance reviews and identify strategies that your trainers could undertake to maintain their currency. stipulate in your trainers contract that they are responsible for ensuring that they complete a minimum amount of that PD, ie to vet workshops and one vet conference per year. Get your trainers involved with assessment validation. deliver your own in house training on that These could include compliance and or training and assessment skills. The other area for trainers and assessors is the staff matrix. Having a suitably qualified and experienced trainer not only helps you get through the audit process, it also ensures that you are delivering training and assessment that will meet the student and industry needs. How an RTO demonstrates that their training suitably qualified and experienced is through their staff or trainers matrix. The staff matrix should include mapping of your trainees skills and knowledge against each unit of competency, which should include the relevant industry experience and or the direct equivalent unit that the trainer and assessor holds. We often find that a trainer may have significant industry experience but does not hold any formal qualifications from their industry sector. In these circumstances, their RTO would need to demonstrate through the staff matrix, the skills and knowledge that their trainer delivers and compare this to the industry skills and knowledge. When addressing the relevant skills and knowledge, consider all of the units of competencies including electives in this analysis to ensure that your trainer and assessor is meeting the requirements specified within the training package or accredited course. Number three assessment tools. So there are four key areas of assessment tools that are non compliant. One is assessment decisions, as well as identified that artios continue to struggle with demonstrating that there are assessment decisions are based on sound assessment practices that address all the requirements of the unit of competency, including the performance criteria, the assessment conditions, foundation skills, the rules of evidence and the principles of assessment. The best strategy for identifying whether an assessment tools collecting sufficient evidence is to undertake validation of the assessment tool against the training product requirements. This will identify whether evidence collected not only addresses the unit requirements, but also identifies whether sound assessment decisions were consistently made with sufficient evidence to demonstrate competency. When validating the assessment tool the process should include and identify that the assessment tool addresses the unit of competency requirements collect sufficient evidence to demonstrate the student's skills and knowledge of the unit provides a range of opportunities for the student to demonstrate competency includes model answers or a marking guide for the assessor to ensure consistency includes clear instructions to the student and the SSR and includes clear benchmarking on the expected performance. Assessment decisions should be considered through the evidence collected against all of the relevant requirements, including their principles, assessment, and rules of evidence. So let's dive into that a bit further. Rules of Evidence often identified during audit is that assessment decisions did not address the rules of evidence, which is the evidence that you have collected to demonstrate that student the student is competent. These include the evidence collected to demonstrate competency is authentic, valid, current, and sufficient. sufficiency of evidence is often an area lacking within completed student assessments. Principles of assessment, the way the assessment tools have been written to collect assessment evidence is another area that usually results in finding of non critical non compliance. Your assessments need to be authored to ensure the assessments process is fair, flexible, valid and reliable. This includes assessments that are likely to result in consistent assessment, application, and outcomes across a range of assessors. practical application, your assessment should provide a range of opportunities for the student to demonstrate the practical application of the skills and knowledge to demonstrate competency. Often when validating assessment tools, we have identified that the assessments do not address the foundation skills, which forms part of the practical application of the skills and knowledge that the students should demonstrate. For example, if the foundation skills includes oral communication, we would expect that the assessment tool would include a demonstration or roleplay. With an observation checklist or a tool to collect the evidence that the student is able to demonstrate a range of communication skills relevant to the training product. an observation checklist should not be the performance criteria turned into a checklist. The observation checklist should include the skills and knowledge that the assessor has to reserve also known as observable skills. All too often artios rely heavily on document driven knowledge based assessments, which does not identify whether the student can apply the skills practically in accordance with industry requirements. Your instructions to the assessor should clearly define a benchmark criterion for each task to be performed. To allow the assessor to be able to make a judgement about a candidate's competency. Again, these should not be cut and pasted from the unit's performance criteria. Your assessment should enable the student to consistency, demonstrate that they are competent. These include the opportunities for the student to practice in multiple situations, able to be practiced over time, and incorporates the opportunity for feedback to be provided by the student. Thank you very much for listening to this episode around the three top non compliances at audit. We have worked with many artios around Australia and we have experienced so many different types of audits with our clients. These come from doing initial registrations or where a client has hired us to get them through re registration. We have learned a lot in this time and this is where I'm able to share this with you on this podcast. So thank you very much for giving me this opportunity to share my skills and knowledge with you