RTO compliance is about understanding of your assessment processes. A client and I were having a discussion the other day about formative and summative assessment. The discussion came about when they were reviewing the training of a particular course, and looking at ways to establish benchmarks in their training, to see how the students were progressing. This is Formative assessment. Formative assessment provides ongoing feedback to trainers and students and is used to monitor the learning progress.

I remember years ago I was at a training course (I was a student) learning how to give exceptional presentations and we had the prepare a presentation. I did mine on the benefits of formative and summative assessment. The topic has always stuck with me since then.

Since then I have always remembered that Summative assessment is the summary at the end of the course. Formative assessments are the ongoing assessments during the training period.

Since formative assessments are considered part of the learning, they need not be included into the mapping of the unit of competence as summative assessments are. Rather, they serve as practice for students, just like a meaningful homework assignment. They check for understanding along the way and guide the trainers decision-making about future instruction; they also provide feedback to students so they can improve their performance.