There’s less a hint than an announcement of what ministers want from the training regulator

A national meeting of training ministers agrees the, “Australian Skills Quality Authority should improve its engagement with the VET sector and expand its educative role. Both the Braithwaite Review of the National Vocational Education and Training Regulator Act 2011 and the Expert Review of VET” (the Joyce Review) “emphasised it is critical to ensure that training providers are aware of, and supported to understand, their compliance requirements, and that regulatory decisions are transparent. Members called for immediate work to be done to reform ASQA’s regulatory approach, improve confidence in the regulator and support continuous improvement in training provision across the VET sector.”

This follows concerted criticism of ASQA’s regulatory approach to private providers, including a federer of a serve from Andrew Laming (Lib-Qld) in the House of Representatives, (CMM August 2.)

Observers of ASQA suggest there is a bit in Valerie Braithwaite’s 2018 review which the agency should focus on;

“as a regulator (ASQA’s) role is to motivate” (registered training organisations) “to reflect on their performance, what they might do better and how they might go about improving their performance. Recommendations in this review favour continuous improvement over mandating quality standards that all RTOs must achieve. … Ultimately, the way ASQA should regulate for quality (as opposed to sufficiency) is to look at how well RTOs go about setting their own higher standards, checking if such standards are met, motivating through praise and encouragement and support when they have achieved improvement, and advising on options when they have not.”