Angela Connell-Richards: 0:28

Okay, hello, and welcome everyone to our new podcast series, the RTO Superhero, where I've got a special guest, lauren Hollows, who will be joining me each month to discuss the new standards. So today we thought we'd start with why you need to prepare for the new standards now. Now we've heard a few things on LinkedIn about you know whether consultants should be rewriting documents for the new standards and should they be selling them, and things like that. And there's also been other things where ASQA have released a practice guide and we've got DWORD doing feedback surveys wanting to know more. So we thought this would be a great topic to start with. So I'll introduce Lauren and she can give us a little background about herself. We've known each other now for over 10 years more, maybe 15.

Lauren Hollows: 1:33

Yeah, all right, go go introduce Lauren Hollows, um. So yeah, so my name is is Lauren Hollows, lauren Bird Hollows, um, and I'm from Anoaia Education Services. Um, anoaia has been around for about five years now and I've been around for substantially more as a, you know, started out as a trainer and an admin and then built into compliance quality CEO operations and now doing consulting. We specialize in creating really bespoke assessment tools and then, you know, through that we work very closely with clients to do things like you know, build courses. We got our first course accredited with a client last year and then hopefully this year expanding out into some even more interesting things making an impact with industry.

Angela Connell-Richards: 2:18

So yeah, that's me. Yes, so you were saying you're getting involved with some industry bodies with writing courses yeah, writing uh courses that.

Lauren Hollows: 2:29

So yeah, we're hoping yeah, we're hoping to be working with some um providers, some of the actual training package uh managers, to actually start updating units of competency and bringing a really strong lens to that of. You know, we build a lot of assessment tools and so you know when we can write, when we can have units of competency that really understand how that then translates to like having to then build training and assessment, run training and assessment around that. I think that we'll be able to really help contribute to the industry.

Angela Connell-Richards: 3:01

I'm interested are they around the new qualifications framework and what they're? So you'll be working towards that as well.

Lauren Hollows: 3:08

Yeah, Absolutely yeah.

Angela Connell-Richards: 3:10

Yeah, there's going to be lots of discussions had?

Angela Connell-Richards: 3:13

Yeah, awesome, all right. So, if you've had your head in the sand, we have some revised standards. So we've got outcome standards, we've got the credential policy and we've got the compliance requirements. The outcome standards is in the final draft and there will be no further edits to that, but the credential policy and the outcomes standards, because they're still in draft and they're still up for review. So there's still lots of changes that could happen with that, because they're still in draft and they're still up for review. So there's still lots of changes that could happen with that, but we're still being prepared. One of the things that I think I would like to know what you think, lauren, with the credential standards.

Lauren Hollows: 4:00

Do you think they'll do a backflip on the qualifications for trainers and assessors no, I think that that's pretty well set in stone, and I think the compliance requirements in the credential policy are relatively black and white documents, yes. So when it comes to creating those into a legislative instrument, I don't think there's going to be any challenges. I actually think that we may potentially see a change to the outcomes, and the reason is is that it's really hard to translate some of those outcomes into a legislative standard, like to meet that legislative format requirement. So, um, I really would like to see what the actual legislative instrument is that ends up getting proposed, because ultimately, that's what we're gonna have to adhere to.

Lauren Hollows: 4:42

Um, yeah, you know, and look, I mean, nothing's like. The only thing that's consistent in our industry is change. So, you know, whenever somebody, whenever we kind of go out and go no, this is it, this is what we're going with, we're good to go, like inevitably somebody comes out the month afterwards and makes us look silly and then they're like actually, we've changed it and we're like okay, cool, that's great um, and then asker can uh do a spin on how they're going to audit it anyway.

Lauren Hollows: 5:09

So it's up to individual interpretation still yeah, yeah, exactly, and I mean I think that the one good thing I will say is is um, I mean you and I both spent a lot of time with them at the vel conference this year um, they put out a lot of presentations, so they are certainly making every effort possible to make it clear, like to provide guidance on how you know policies should be written to account for that you know how you can set yourself up in such a way that you know your policies can show how you're meeting the outcome standards and also making it, you know, as easy as possible for the auditors to actually understand how they should. Then you know how you've interpreted them and how that then translates to evidence and certainly that's been a really good focus for us.

Angela Connell-Richards: 6:00

And I think it's really good how they've done the process so that we've got plenty of time to prepare. So it's not like the standards are in and now you've got to reinvent everything and then it takes that catch up time where ASQA or the regulator is auditing against the new standards but we're still writing, whereas now we've got plenty of time to prepare, so rewriting all the documents and things like that. So I know, so we've already been discussing what we've been doing so far. There's been some talk on LinkedIn about how we shouldn't be creating new documents or selling new documents at the moment with the revised standards, because it's not hasn't come into force yet yet. But I think that's crazy.

Lauren Hollows: 6:48

Uh, apparently only 40 percent of rtos have actually looked at updating their documents, which yeah, and I mean, look to be fair, like you've probably got 40 percent of rtos that haven't looked at updating their documents in the last five years so you know like you know, it's one of those things, um, I mean, I think general best practice is kind of like a quick review every year, um, but certainly this year's review should be a little bit more intensive for most rtos.

Lauren Hollows: 7:20

Um, I know, like our process has certainly been. We've basically gone in, we've we've made some pretty big changes to like the template of the policy and how we're communicating certain aspects of it to uh, to the regulator in particular. So, and then also how we're communicating it to um, students and staff. So I think, like one of the things that often happens with policies and procedures is that they're written by compliance people like us who have a really good understanding. They then have to be translated for students and staff members, and so, you know, we've kind of had, we've got new sections where it's like this is what this policy looks like in practice, and so we've explained to trainers and we've explained to students what this policy means to you from like a user experience perspective, and that's off of feedback from asqua. And then we've added another section where we've kind of gone um, here's the evidence of policy and practice and so when this policy is being implemented correctly.

Lauren Hollows: 8:24

Here's some of the documents that you. You know you as an auditor can look to to see that we're actually doing the right thing. So we've really kind of tried to because we've got outcome standards that are a little bit more vague than we might have had in the past. We really wanted to make sure that we were guiding people. We were guiding the students and the staff to understand their key points and how it affects them, and we were then guiding auditors on like what we thought this meant and where they could then go to for evidence. So it was like here's the standard, here's the policy. The policy says where you go for the evidence, here's the evidence. A, b, c. Tick the box.

Angela Connell-Richards: 9:02

We're compliant, we're doing yeah yeah, we've also included an accountable person, because that comes under the vet workforce and leadership and team. So we've got for every document, who's accountable for that document, and also with the policies and procedures as well. So who's accountable? Yeah, we've done the same. We've done a total new rewrite of the policies and procedures as well. So who's accountable? Yeah, we've done the same. We've done a total new rewrite of the policies and procedures.

Angela Connell-Richards: 9:30

After D was saying we're hoping that everyone will rewrite and not map. But I haven't thrown out the baby with the bathwater. I've looked at our previous policies and procedures and then incorporated that in. And I think some of the great things now is the tools that we can use using AI technology. Our team have started using a tool called Miro where you can create simple flowcharts. So you can. It's AI tech, so you can go in and you can put in what your policy is or your procedure is, and then it will create it into a flow chart to make it easier for people to understand. So I think, um, the great thing with uh ai tech now is we're going to be able to make uh, our policies and procedures easier to follow yeah, yeah, and I mean then there's like, I mean there's obviously.

Lauren Hollows: 10:23

Then there's tools, um, like we were talking about with dan hill, you know where you can take your policy, update it and then create that as like a 10-minute conversation between two people. You know, and support students with that. So there is a lot more ways that we can integrate and I think that particular part is really important because to me, one of the biggest changes in the standards is about, like, well-being, student support. You know, contextualizing, distributed needs and things like that. So so many of the learners within the vet space are, you know, most of them come in at, you know, um, aqf levels and literacy levels of either basic or functional literacy.

Lauren Hollows: 11:08

I was doing a podcast about this the other day and like, literally, you've got 44% that only have basic literacy rates. When we look at adults across Australia, you've got 38% that only have functional literacy rates. And yet those of us that work in VET, that write materials in VET, particularly those of us that work in complianceET that write materials in VET, particularly those of us that work in compliance, we're sitting in the top 15%. Sometimes it can be quite hard for us to kind of go. Okay, here's us with our academic brains, simple terms.

Lauren Hollows: 11:36

But when we translate this so that a student with basic literacy understands it, how can we do that? Because if you've got a policy that you've got to communicate to a student, but the student reads it and has absolutely no idea what it means, then it's useless.

Angela Connell-Richards: 11:51

Yeah, yeah, and if we can do it in a simple process where it's just like step by step, this is what you need to do. So, for example, how to submit a complaint and or appeal, or if they want to do an opportunity for improvement or provide any feedback which is what we're seeing in a lot of the documents is getting that continuous feedback. The other thing that we're now adding to a lot of our documents now is to comply with the risk management requirements, and the continuous improvement is we're now putting risk management in a lot of our documents, such as WHS, opportunities for improvement, complaints and appeals, so we're putting it in those, but we're also creating new ones that has a risk level in it, so you're doing something similar.

Lauren Hollows: 13:05

Yeah, we've really focused more in and around like the validation and the feedback processes for different courses and units of competency. So we've got like a whole process for how we actually risk rate every course that an RTO delivers, like based on you know how many of the ASC or risk priority areas does it hit how? How much delivery do we do of it? Um, is it all online delivery? Is it a vulnerable cohort? Um, and all of those sorts of factors go into it and then, based on that, it's going to come up with like that force is going to have a risk rating of either like high risk, low risk, and then that feeds into our validation frequency of it, like so if we're dealing with where we're doing, like, literally, you know we're doing, the thousands of students.

Lauren Hollows: 13:52

It's international students, it's a cohort that's highly vulnerable. Um, you know it's on asper's, you know kind of risk radar. Then that's going to require higher levels of validation, more frequent validation. Then you know, perhaps, course, that we run 20 people through a year. That's a workplace, it's an apprenticeship, you know it's. You know like you could do. You know, take surgery, commercial cookery, for example. You could have one cohort that's 10 students. That's doing it. You know, um, over through an apprenticeship.

Lauren Hollows: 14:26

You know they get a visit every month from their, you know, from their trainer and assessor. You've got another one where you've got 3 000 international students running through as a, as you know, running through as a cohort. They're all from one, like one continent or one country. Um, yeah, totally different risk ratings that are going to be present. You know, for those things, different validation requirements, different. You know mechanisms that we need to put in and around that. So we've really brought risk ratings.

Angela Connell-Richards: 14:55

And are you doing that in?

Lauren Hollows: 14:56

a spreadsheet, yeah yeah. So we've kind of got like a calculator that we've set up for it. And so when we do our TAS reviews, the TAS, you know, based on the TAS, we take a look at the risk rating, we set the risk rating and then that goes into our validation process.

Angela Connell-Richards: 15:13

Yeah, yeah, because I don't like to be honest.

Lauren Hollows: 15:14

I don't like the ask for risk calculator. I just think that's far too simple of a mechanism and it's just not really. No, I love it. So we use a separate system.

Angela Connell-Richards: 15:27

Yeah, how you've broken that down, that is perfect. We're doing risk rating based on overall operations and compliance with the standards, but I love that idea for courses as well. So, yeah, really drilling in. So how are you incorporating, then, support services? Does it identify, uh, different types of support services that you would then require?

Lauren Hollows: 15:52

yeah, so we look at it from a cohort perspective and then the support services would then be like more attached to like our um, like the, the support and access and equity policies and things like that. So we've got, I think, all right, like we've got access and equity, bullying and harassment and uh and student support, now all kind of that we've had to build out for all of them, and that's also been in context of um. You know some of the experiences that we've had with our rtos this year, really looking at how some of the new hr legislation is playing in um, taking a look at how you know some of the new safety legislation is being impacted as well. I think hr just seems to be one of those areas where, um, the vast majority of rtos really don't have a lot of like experience, like the amount of times I'll go in there and they'll be like, do you have like a contract for a trainer? And I'm like, yeah, but like you know, are they permanent, are they part-time, are they contract, are they?

Lauren Hollows: 16:54

you know, like what's their? Qualification Like there's so much that goes into it with the way that our instrument is built. Yeah, much that goes into it with the with the way that our instrument is built, um, yeah I think hr is definitely one of the areas that particularly focus on that workforce now yeah, yeah, yeah, which will definitely come into more play, like you know, the fact that we can't, you know everyone was focused on do we get trainer pd? Okay, great, now it's. There's that whole system you know what are your?

Lauren Hollows: 17:25

what pd are your admin getting, which is great, because admin don't get anywhere near enough pd, and I know you know this.

Lauren Hollows: 17:32

Yes, like they do things and they don't know what they're doing. And then we go in and review the data and it's like you guys have got all of these units starting and finishing on the same day and they're like, oh, because that's when they came in to do their one day course. And we're like, yeah, but you gave them their materials three weeks before the final assessment was signed off, two weeks after that, when the student actually submitted it through your online system. But you've said it's all done in one day, but it's actually done over like five weeks you know massive this is what you're communicating to the regulator, it's so different.

Angela Connell-Richards: 18:08

I've gone into training organisations where the admin staff in particular knew nothing about the legislation, knew nothing about what was compliance and what they needed to have in place. I've also met many trainers who don't understand it either. So I think it's fantastic that we now have Vet PD for everyone, because they then can understand the risks and understand what they need to have in place. And everyone is like. I've always. Always said we should have a culture of continuous improvement throughout the rto, and it shouldn't just be one person, it should be. Everyone is part of that culture.

Lauren Hollows: 18:53

Yeah, yeah, definitely well, ultimately, we're dealing with training organizations, and if you can't train your own staff on your own policies and procedures, I find it really funny that you're selling services on how to train other people's staff on knowing their policies and procedures, but you can't do it yourself, like okay cool, yeah, and what are your thoughts on?

Angela Connell-Richards: 19:14

so what I noticed in the practice guides is so ASQA's released practice guides now, so if you haven't heard about this yet, the practice guides are on the ASQA website. So far they've released under Quality Area 1, training and Assessment, and Quality Area 4, governance. They've got Leadership and Accountability and Risk Management. They're still developing guides for student support and vet workforce, so I just thought I'd add that in there, but they've included now work integrated learning, so we've got another acronym will. I thought it was fantastic. I delivered a webinar on this yesterday and the importance. So what has been identified in as part of the VET reform, as well as the new standards, is there's not enough time for the students to apply the skills in a real simulated or work integrated learning environment, and I see that there's a lot more focus now on work integrated learning, which I think is also going to be really critical for when you're writing your training materials as well yeah, I mean, look, it's interesting.

Lauren Hollows: 20:36

I was talking to somebody this morning and you know, she turned around. She, well, it's pretty straightforward Basically, you can't assess somebody on something that you haven't trained them. And I went that's actually, you know, that's a really beautiful, simple way of explaining it. Yeah, but like, certainly there are definitely some areas, and I mean I'm just going to say it, this is why Pricos is such a risk area, because we have, you know, so often I've seen places whereby the first time that a student is cooking a dish is the time they're being assessed on it, and it's like they've never made this dish before and now you're assessing them on it and you're assuming that, like that the assessment process is the training process, but like, legitimately, we've never. Like you're, you're taking a student that's not working in industry, that hasn't worked in industry, and the first time people are asking them to make a souffle is the time that you're assessing them on like that's.

Lauren Hollows: 21:38

That's a big, big, bloody ask. Yeah, but it does happen a lot, particularly where, like, there's a high cost to undertaking that assessment, right? So you know, like, let's look at the seafood unit in commercial cookery, that unit, you know you're looking at a roundabout. You're looking at a couple of hundred dollars a student. You know you're looking at a roundabout, you're looking at a couple of hundred dollars a student. You know, in physical resources, in fish, in, you know, in crustaceans in green frogs.

Lauren Hollows: 22:11

You know like you've got to have about six different types of fish. You've got a whole, got a whole bank of fish. So you know there's a huge expense to it. You know we've got hairdressing where we've got to do. You know we've got to use neutralizers we've got to use, you know, colors um, you've got painting where you know you've got to. You know you've got to do paint and blast or you've got to. You know you've got to strip products and things like that. So I think that, particularly where we've got really high cost units to deliver, um, you know, anytime you're're doing like diggers or anything like that, you know you're up for $100 an hour. So I can understand the RTOs going. Well, you know, if I train the students on it for eight hours and then I've got to observe them on it for a further four hours, I'm looking at $1,200 for that. One student in that cost, right? Yep, okay, nuts, screw that. They're going to have two hours on the machine to train.

Angela Connell-Richards: 23:09

They're going to have two hours on the machine to assess, because that only costs us $400, right yeah, whereas if they did work, integrated learning, where they did a work placement, and they're able to apply the skills in the workplace, where they're selling the dishes, yeah, yeah.

Lauren Hollows: 23:26

Shoot a massively different scenario, but so many, like so often, and I think this is why, like ASCO, over the years, have been pushing RTOs to go when's the training happening and when's the assessment happening? Because, I know you've got the unit structure there for two days or for four days, but how much of that is in a classroom, how much of that is in a practical environment? And in that practical environment how much is training and how much is assessment?

Angela Connell-Richards: 23:53

Yeah, and how many times are they applying the skills? On a number of occasions, yeah.

Lauren Hollows: 23:58

And very few like quite and this is the sad part is that a lot of RTOs really do struggle to explain how that breaks down and that's probably the area like when we're working on a TAS that's the hardest area to work with. Rtos on is like, yeah, but dude, when are they in the classroom, when are they in the practical? Okay, and how much of that practical time is this and how much is this? And yeah, there's just so many rtos admins, trainers that really struggle to explain what is what you know, yeah, yeah and trainers.

Lauren Hollows: 24:32

Well, trainers will. Trainers will turn around to an ask for order and they'll be like, yep, we do this. Then we go into the kitchen and we make, we make this, and we make this and we make this and you know, ask with those great, okay, so how many times do they make that dish? And they go. Well, they make the dish once. Okay, cool, thanks, that's great. And they don't say anything else not because from that one statement, you've just turned around and gone. We don't train, we only assess yeah, and trainers have got no idea.

Lauren Hollows: 25:00

And then it comes into the order report and you go what?

Angela Connell-Richards: 25:03

Yeah, you know it's great. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, all right. So we've talked a lot about training and assessment, and so there hasn't what I could see in the practice guides. There hasn't been a lot of changes. There's more focus on assessment validation, which sort of what we were experiencing last year is they weren't even looking at the legislation for assessment validation unless your assessment tools were non-compliant, whereas now they're going back to. You've got to have a validation schedule, you've got to have risk management as part of that within the validation. They've still focused on the rules of evidence and principles.

Angela Connell-Richards: 25:47

Assessment Work. Integrated learning is the only thing that I've seen. That is really different. There is a big focus on RPL. I'm surprised at how many people actually don't understand how to conduct an RPL assessment, actually don't understand how to conduct an RPL assessment. And do I need to have an RPL kit if I'm delivering only single units and I'm like yes, the legislation says that you must offer RPL. So the whole idea behind RPL is to recognise skills that people already have, but getting them in to provide evidence of those skills, and there are so many people out there that have skills but just don't have the recognition for it. What are your thoughts on RPL?

Lauren Hollows: 27:01

right, um. So my thoughts on rpl are that, um, we actually shouldn't have. Well, I'm going to be really controversial. I actually don't think we should have rpl, I think we should have rcc.

Lauren Hollows: 27:13

Um and the reason for that is is that rcc used to be recognition of current competency yes, um, and recognition of prior learning, I think. So there's so many, there's so much flawed misunderstanding that it's a process where I hand over my resume and I get my student yeah, and so I kind of feel like we should just get rid of the whole bloody thing and go back to rdc, which is recognition of current competency because in the vast majority of cases that I've ever seen, most students do not have the evidence to actually produce a sufficient RPL right.

Lauren Hollows: 27:52

When you look at the complexity of the units, yes, they may have the actual skills, but providing evidence of those skills is a super difficult thing.

Lauren Hollows: 28:02

So, like when we build rpl kits. It's an education process where it's like okay, guys, this is what rpl is, and rpl basically says we recognize you've previously learned this and so therefore, we're not going to put you through all the training again. Right, yeah, and it's. There's a real crossover and we generally tend to like lead most students into an assessment only process, because what we do is we kind of go through and we go okay, for this particular qualification, here's all the skills that you should have and here's a whole bunch of the evidence that you would need to have in order to be able to show that you have the knowledge and the skills in order to meet the unit of competency requirements knowledge and the skills in order to meet the unit of competency requirements. And 99.99999% of the time when we provide that to a student, they turn around and go.

Lauren Hollows: 28:52

I can do x, y andz. However, I don't have any evidence of that, right, like, I've never written any policies. I've never. You know, yes, I might, I have emails and yes, I have records of that, but you know, due to privacy requirements, there's no way my employer is going to be able to release them. I've only worked in this job for a year. All the other stuff would be with my previous employer, which I don't have access to.

Lauren Hollows: 29:20

You know, like there's all of these sorts of really rational reasons. Like even when I upheld my diploma, I actually like I was working with mr wed and on a couple of ones they were like, well, do you have this? I'm like, yes, I do, but there's no way in hell I'm going to be allowed to release that to you. Like none of my clients are going to agree to that. I was like, just give me the assessment and I'll do the assessment, and it'll take me like one third of the time. So we often go through this with students and a lot of the times students will turn to us and go you know, yeah, happy, like you can come out, you can watch me do this, but you know all of the knowledge evidence, I'm not going to have anything that I can actually provide you with. So that's kind of where I'm going.

Lauren Hollows: 29:57

I think rcc was actually a better mechanism, because you're recognizing that they are currently competent and you're really just taking them through an assessment only process which mitigates you needing to provide any amount of training you know, rationale and to us, like that's what we do with rpl, is we kind of go, we take them through a process, we look at their experience, we make the call yes, you've got sufficient experience that you don't need to be trained on all of this. Or maybe you only need to be trained on two out of you know 14 units um, for the rest of it, there's no training involved. You're going to go directly into an assessment yeah, I agree with the current competencies.

Angela Connell-Richards: 30:36

I remember when that was around and um being in the training industry that long, but I think it. Yeah, that terminology really does explain much better what that process is. We're looking at your current competencies and how your skills align with the unit of competency.

Lauren Hollows: 30:56

Yeah, yeah, I do like that there's such a stigma as well. Like there's such a stigma around. Everyone thinks RPL is like, as I said, this process where you just hand over a, you know, hand over a resume, hand over a third party report and you get a certificate. We need to get that out, or that. Like, yeah, it just yeah, it needs to go. Well, I like your standpoint on that, um.

Angela Connell-Richards: 31:20

Uh, my process is very similar. It's looking at their current competencies, so it's looking at the evidence, um, but it is also identifying well, if we can't, um, if we can't find that, if you can't give us the evidence, then we can just do the assessment. So it makes it much easier, which is contradictory to this, to what we're talking about earlier, where people are going straight into assessment and hospitality, um, and not doing the training. But it's very different when you're looking at current competencies. So where are you currently within those schools?

Lauren Hollows: 31:53

If you've been a chef for 10 years, yeah, absolutely cool. I would expect you to probably be able to go directly into assessment.

Lauren Hollows: 32:01

If you've been a chef at a um you know purely at like an asian restaurant that only works dinner shifts then maybe you know when it comes to certain units we're actually going to have to put you through some training. But, like you know, there's a big difference between not providing training to a guy that's worked in the industry for 10 years and not providing training to an international student that's never stepped foot in a kitchen yeah, yeah.

Angela Connell-Richards: 32:27

Or the other one they may have worked in a kitchen in their own country, but have they had to comply with these strain requirements and health conditions and things like yeah, yeah exactly, yeah, like high, you know, hygiene and that sort of yes, all of that yes, yeah, very different, very different. Um, okay, so what are your thoughts on early preparation for the new standards? What, uh, where do you stand with that?

Lauren Hollows: 32:58

I imagine I stand fairly similarly to you that if you're not preparing for them, you're probably setting yourself up for a pain. And if you like, let's say, you've got your re-reg due in like may or something like that and you're turning around and going, oh well, I'll be done with my re-reg by may. So therefore, I'm not gonna, they're not, I don't have to have anything ready. Uh, the reality is is that if you actually get an audit from asquire, you've got about I don't know like a five percent chance of getting your re-reg by that date, right, it's more than likely that you are going to blow out. You're going to go into a period where your re-reg is pending in tga um and, as we can only audit against one legislative instrument, so if your audit report comes out as like if you got audited in May but your audit report's not going to come out until July 1st.

Lauren Hollows: 33:52

That audit report's going to be against the new standards, it's not going to be against the old standards. So I basically said to all my clients if you've got a re-reg or an initial registration planned for 2025, you need to be able to show and demonstrate compliance against both sets of standards, because we don't know where you're going to fall in. Asqa has no leeway in this. Up to the 30th, every report has to be against the old standards. From the 1st, every report has to be against the new standards. They have no say, no control. It's a legislative instrument and you know time happens right.

Angela Connell-Richards: 34:28

Yes.

Lauren Hollows: 34:28

Blowouts happen, so you should have it against both.

Angela Connell-Richards: 34:32

You should absolutely be prepared for both. And one other thing that I think people need to take into consideration. So people are thinking if we have a change of government, that could throw out all of the current legislation that is in draft, which is not true, because the VET reform was actually started by the previous government and the VET reform is also signed by all the heads of state, so it's definitely going ahead. It doesn't matter whether we have a change of government. However, if we do have a change of government they were not not dewa, but asqua could just stop auditing they. That could be interrupted. Yeah, the change of government. Yeah like.

Lauren Hollows: 35:18

I think that the biggest changes that we'll see if we do a change of government is, I think and this is pretty consistent is, I think the approach to cryocross and migration will pretty much do a 180. And you know, the opposition has made that very bloody clear that you know this idea of like killing an entire international market and wiping billions off our bottom line is not the smartest idea, and so they're probably going to do a reverse about that.

Lauren Hollows: 35:48

So I think that's a good thing. And then I think the other thing that we will see is we will see a move back to a more balanced funding model between the private and public markets. And again, I think that TAFE does a brilliant job on certain things. I think there is a real need for them in public markets and again I think that TAFE does a brilliant job on certain things. I think there is a real need for them in particular markets, but purely value for money-wise, given that in the last year, with our fee-free TAFE, we had a less than was it 13% completion rate, something along those lines.

Angela Connell-Richards: 36:20

Completion rate. Yes, that's not good value for money, whereas private RTOs they're up around 80% completion rate, something along those lines. Yes, yeah, whereas private rtos they're up around 80 completion rate.

Lauren Hollows: 36:28

Yeah, and I mean, look, I'm sure you're going to have people arguing that it's because private rtos are less strenuous and they tick and flake.

Lauren Hollows: 36:35

The reality is is that private rtos are businesses and therefore they cannot afford inefficiencies, and so they structure training in a very different way, because we don't get given millions and millions of dollars to train and not get an outcome. You know like, in the private market, across the vast majority of funding models, you are paid to get an outcome. If you don't get that outcome, you know like, even if you even like with WA, which is very generous, they give 70 upon commencement you have 80 completion benchmarks you've got to meet in order to meet your funding contract requirements, so you get paid for an outcome. There needs to be a balance of private and public funding in order for us to maximize the outcomes for the vocational education sector. So I think that's the biggest shift that we will see if we go back, if we go into a Liberal government and look, just based on what I'm seeing across the world, I'd be very surprised if we don't swing into a Liberal government in a few different states and federally over the next couple of years.

Angela Connell-Richards: 37:40

Yeah, I think what's happened with the education sector in particular since the impact of COVID and then we're still feeling the after effects and you know, and that stupid thing that they did with the caps, international student caps and just yeah, just crazy stuff. They're really killing education. In Australia, like, when you think about pre-pandemic, we were consistently international education was our first or second biggest uh export, yeah, and now it's it's not even not even listed because it's just, yeah, the reality is when we export education, we export australian values.

Lauren Hollows: 38:22

Yes, um, you know, it's a, it's a billion dollar export industry, so we're bringing money in from other countries.

Lauren Hollows: 38:29

Uh, and we are absolutely reliant on that, you know, from a national level. Like we, we want to be exporting australian values out to the rest of the world. We want to be promoting all of the amazing things that we do in this country, and education is one of the. Vocational education and building skills is actually something we do really well. I'm not going to say the same thing for our secondary education system, given that we have, you know, more than 70 of our adults with not even based functional literacy, um, but vocational education picks up the slack for that in a lot of ways.

Lauren Hollows: 39:04

Like we do, we build skills well in this country and it's something we should be really, really proud of and it is something we should absolutely be exporting to the rest of the world. You know how to build ships safely, how to fly planes safely. You know, like we have amazing resources.

Angela Connell-Richards: 39:22

How to work on a construction site safely fighting and everything like that.

Lauren Hollows: 39:26

Like we have really low levels of death, we have really low levels of, you know, industry accidents. You know that is because of the training that we put in place and the skills and the competencies that we have. We should be very, very proud of that and having whs in most qualifications yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah absolutely, yeah.

Angela Connell-Richards: 39:45

So my position on this is yes, absolutely. We need to be prepared. We're already seeing changes in ASQA documentation for initial and re-reg. They're asking for different things now, very similar to what's in the new standards. So, yes, they can't audit us against the new standards, but they're, of course, preparing as well. So we need to be prepared and I think all RTOs should have at least reviewed the standards, to start with the revised standards, and then they should be putting in an action plan of how they're going to adjust to the new standards, where where I'm actually in the process of writing a 90-day action plan that rtos will be able to use for um, for reviewing their policies, procedures and documents and then implementing that uh before the first of july and making sure that they have everything in place. Yeah, and I anticipate we're going to have about 150 documents different documents there may be some. There's also there's some that we've already got rid of because it's been a great review process actually, because I found it's a great time to update everything. And where you were saying other legislations change, like WHS has changed, so we've changed our whole WHS risk assessment requirements and also very much so adding risk management into everything. So that's been a major change as well.

Angela Connell-Richards: 41:24

I think anybody who's not prepared, who hasn't started looking at their documents and you know, maybe you don't have an audit for another five years, you're re-reg, that's your re-reg is due. Asqa can do an audit at any given time If they see that one training product on your scope is at risk, or you receive a complaint, or they just decide that they're going to focus on a quality area and you're rich, you're the name that's been pulled out of the hat. You never, never know when you're going to be audited, and it's always good to be prepared. We get people who ring us and say ASper have just contacted us and they're coming in for an audit next week. Can you help us?

Angela Connell-Richards: 42:07

No, there's not enough time. We like there's. We cannot fix your rto in a week. It's uh, you need to have everything in place and if you're not ready for the first of july, uh, you're putting yourself at a major risk as your RTO. Okay, so let's now focus on. What do you think are the critical changes that RTOs need to focus on? Um first, what should they start with?

Lauren Hollows: 42:37

look, I mean for me, the biggest change in the standards is really that focus back on um student, um student well-being, student support, like that's the number one change um over awareness diversity yeah, absolutely.

Lauren Hollows: 42:55

But I think just more, you know really kind of going okay, once you take a student on, you are taking that student on, and we've seen this very strongly in the ESOS space of like the importance of onboarding students correctly, making sure that students progress through their qualification. We see it very much in the apprenticeship space where you know you've got to support you know support the learner, where you've got to check that the workplace has got everything that they need, where you've got to be doing regular check-ins, all this sort of stuff. And I think that the standards are probably just a reflection of bringing in a lot of those sorts of requirements and kind of making it so that the standards do. There's not really any like there's not a lot of stuff now that sits in ESau sports, sits in the um state funding contract requirements that's now not broadly covered through the actual standards themselves. So you know, like managing the progression of the learners I think is going to be one for fifa.

Lauren Hollows: 43:53

Like, if you're a fee-for-service short course rTO, I think you're probably in for a bigger change than most because you know it's. You know, previously you might have had students just coming and going, coming and going, and if you're now, you've kind of got to actually look at it and go okay. So most of our students are only with us for a couple of weeks at a time. You know, we have maybe two physical encounters with the students through that process. What is an appropriate amount of support and well-being for that process?

Lauren Hollows: 44:29

Okay well alternatively, if I'm providing an online course to a student and they're enrolled with me for over a year and my strategy for supporting the student through that process is to send them an automated email every month, and that's my support strategy and I don't provide any face-to-face classes and I don't have an actual physical person allocated to that student. Um, you know, I think that, that, like the online rtos that operate in that space, you know there's a lot of rtos where, like, you enroll in a course for 12 months and then you are charged a fee if you want to extend the course out for an additional three months or six months. I think there's a lot of questions there as to like, are you providing students for their well-being? Is it fair to charge an extension fee for a course if you haven't provided any opportunities or if you haven't provided them with any notification about progress, if you haven't like onboarded them correctly?

Lauren Hollows: 45:26

Like, I see a lot of these kind of online RTOs that do a great job of like enrolling the student and then the conversion of enrollment to actual commencement is like 40%, and I've always laughed at these Rtos because I'm like you've put all your you put all your shit into marketing and getting the stuff done at the beginning and then you don't actually convert any of your students to commencement. Like you know, basic business guys like you'd be, you'd be done right, yeah, um. But yeah, I see it all the time like let's just get that 1500 payment in and then we're not going to worry about the student when that point onwards.

Angela Connell-Richards: 46:01

There's also a new requirement in the standards that you must give access. Students must have access to trainers and assessors, so that is going to have a major impact for all of those online. They need to actually have it scheduled in their calendar as part of their delivery and assessment plan. Is how and when are the students going to get access to their trainers and assessors? So they need to be incorporating that into their documents as well. Okay, well, I think we've gone well and truly over time now. This has been fantastic having a chat, and I'm looking forward to doing this regularly with you, Lauren, because this is our favourite subject. So it's very similar to when we catch up live in person. We're like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

Lauren Hollows: 46:48

This is pretty much the same conversation that we would have offline, as it is.

Angela Connell-Richards: 46:51

Yeah, yeah, yeah, what our thoughts are and what we think you should be doing and, oh God, this is what's happening now. What are you doing? So I'm looking forward to sharing this with you every month for this year and having these conversations. I was inspired by your podcast series, lauren, and you had a specific focus on standards, but I thought wouldn't it be nice for people to actually drop in on our conversation and hear how two consultants who have been in the industry for a very long time and see many changes in legislation and in regulatory bodies and and having that for me? I love having the conversation, but let's record it and share it with other people.

Lauren Hollows: 47:41

Yeah, and because a lot of like a lot of. If you're a compliance person in a small RTO, you won't have exposure to a lot of these conversations and I know when I was coming up through the regs and stuff like that.

Lauren Hollows: 47:53

Being able to like, listen to, like my CEO, you know, speak with the operations manager, being able to hear those conversations was really how, like, I developed, um, you know, to have that board understanding of that. So I think the more exposure people can have to these sorts of conversations, that the more they start to think about like their own development process.

Angela Connell-Richards: 48:14

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Um, I've found that, like vivacity, I've been running now for over 15 years and the best quality conversations I've had is like we go to the vel conference but we don't necessarily go for the content. We go to meet, catch up, and it's like catching up with family, um, who are in the same industry as you. It's's just fantastic. Yes, 100%, yeah, okay. So thank you very much, Lauren, for joining me today for our very first episode of the year, and we've got a number of links that are in the podcast review as well. Those links are for the practice guides for aspa, as well as the dewar survey that is actually due next week. So, um, so we're going to be uploading this as soon as possible so people can get onto uh, the uh doing the survey, because I think you really need to be giving feedback wherever we can, and we're doing it as a team at for Vivacity, the whole team's getting together and we're going to complete the survey together.