Developing Assessment Tools for your RTO is one of the most critical areas. When applying to become an RTO, you must demonstrate that your organisation has developed all required assessment systems and materials for the scope of registration applied for. As no assessment decisions will have been made and the validation activities required by the Standards will not have been undertaken, new RTOs need only be able to demonstrate how validation activities will be undertaken in a systematic way.

When planning assessment, ensure you address all of the requirements of the unit or module. This does not mean you have to develop separate assessment activities for each item, but that, as a whole your assessment activities must cover every area required. To achieve a ‘competent’ result, learners must meet all the requirements of the unit.

If your RTO applies any form of grading to learners, ensure that this is applied only after the learner has been assessed as fully competent and is in addition to a determination of competent or otherwise.

The type of evidence you should retain to demonstrate your assessment systems’ effectiveness depends to some extent on the context in which it is to be used.

In the case of an organisation seeking to register as an RTO or to add a new qualification to their scope of registration — you must provide documentation on the assessment system accompanied by assessment materials fully addressing the relevant unit of competency, module or cluster.

Where learners have completed the unit being examined—you must provide completed assessment items (including the evidence considered when the assessment was conducted, who the assessor was, and the outcome).

Part of the evidence that assessment has been conducted adequately will be the evidence criteria that are used by assessors to judge the quality of performance and make their decisions. This could be in the form of model answers or responses, samples of work items that meet specifications or more general guidance for assessors as to what the characteristics of satisfactory responses or behaviours look like. How prescriptive such material is depends on the nature of the unit—units from lower AQF level qualifications will tend to be more prescriptive with ‘correct’ responses, while those at higher levels may have broader guidelines.

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