Self-assurance – It’s simpler than you think
Aligning your RTO with ASQA’s new direction on Self-Assurance.
A note from Steve Scotton, director of Resolution Compliance:
With the risk of sounding overly optimistic, I’m actually excited with the direction ASQA is now taking in their approach to regulating the Vocational Education and Training (VET) industry. In their own words, they are:
moving the system of regulation from its focus on compliance to a focus on excellence in training and quality outcomes.
[They are moving] away from input and compliance controls to a focus on self-assurance and excellence in training outcomes
(extracts from ASQA Corporate Plan 2021 – 22)
I’m excited because my business is and has been for some time about putting in place self-assurance systems for RTOs, and because “excellence in training outcomes” is far more inspirational than “compliance”.
Compliance engenders thoughts of just meeting requirements, austere measures, and stern headmistresses and school principals (not that there is anything wrong with headmistresses and school principals, but you get what I mean!). Whereas excellence in training outcomes for me is about pursuing quality in not only how we train and assess, but how we achieve excellence in the way we monitor and address quality issues, and translate those into quality outcomes for our clients. Doesn’t that sound more like something to go for?
The other reason I like the direction the regulator is taking is because you can systemise the pursuit of quality, and systems can make self-assurance simple.
An influential person in my life once said to me, “You’ll go far if you can make the complex, simple, and then make that compelling.” I’ve tried to do that in running my consultancy business for training organisations.
It’s important that we are able to look at a situation, work through all the information and sometimes confusion that may be present, and put systems in place that make the complex simple. Systems that do not take a whole lot of calories to understand, and can be relatively easy to execute within the organisation’s operations.
Simple does not mean lazy, or average. A robust self-assurance system can be simple to understand and execute, but be very comprehensive in its search for and implementation of excellent practices.
Take, for example, our system for Continuous Improvement (CI) – a system I believe is integral to driving quality in your organisation.
When you boil it down, a CI system simply consists of a CI Register (which can be as basic as a spreadsheet) and a regular meeting of influential people in your organisation to answer three questions for each item raised on the register:
How are we doing?
What do we need to do next?
Who’s doing the things we need to do?
With these questions we consider all the people affected by our actions (particularly our students), the ongoing practices of the organisation, and the documents affected. All of these considerations happen while we simply follow the column headings of the register, and doing this regularly means we are continuously monitoring our quality, fixing up lacks when we find them, and achieving better outcomes for our clients and students.
Sounds like a great self-assurance system to me, that ends up getting quality outcomes for our clients.
That’s just one system. You can systemise a whole lot of other things in relation to the RTO Standards, for example – your monitoring of your training and assessment practices, the industry currency and VET PD of your trainers, and industry consultation, to name just a few, and all within the scope of what you day-to-day.
So, take heart – self-assurance does not have to be difficult, nor expensive. You’ve just got to systemise it, and then execute on those systems.
Regards,
Steve Scotton
Director of Resolution Compliance.
