Registered Training Organisations (RTO’s) are constantly having to be aware of changes and with ASQA moving into its second year it is bedding down some issues that have raised their head over the past 12 months. The regulatory changes taking place in today’s training and development environment are placing pressure on RTO’s in more ways than one.
One of the latest notifications is about the retainment of student assessments.
The new direction states:
“An RTO is required to securely retain, and be able to produce in full at audit if requested to do so, all completed student assessment items for a student, as per the definition above, for:
the duration of the RTO’s assessment appeal period
or
a period of six months from the date on which the judgement of competence for the student was made
or
the duration of the student’s enrolment
—whichever is the longer period.”
So this begs the question of are RTOs needing to invest in some fire retardant safe that securely retains these records?
- Do you have a secure vault?
- Do you need to chop down more trees to show the auditor?
Or are there other options you could consider?
- Can you scan the documents and save soft copies?
- This directive may have implications on the RTO server and storage system allowance.
- Do you have a student database that allows you to save the information electronically against the individuals record?
There is a comment that “the assessors marking guide, criteria and observation checklist for each student may be sufficient where it is not possible to retain the students actual work” and maybe this is the direction your RTO takes. Your judgement tools will provide a good marking guide.
In the end it is up to each RTO to decide what is the right way to go and the consequences administratively and ultimately commercially.