Are the New Assessment Instruments AQTF Compliant?
Wed, Mar 17 2010
Editorial James Tennant Managing Director Easy Guides Australia Pty Ltd Easy Guides Australia Pty Ltd is a major publisher of learning materials for licensing materials now deemed "high risk". We are currently creating and releasing new learning materials for the new national licensing system that sit under the 'National Standard for licensing persons performing high risk work'. The new system requires learners to complete a Unit of Competency course through a registered training organisation (RTO). Once the learners have successfully completed the course (eg. TLILIC108A Licence to operate a forlift truck) including formative assessment tasks along the way, they are then given permission to undergo the final summative assessment which comes in the form of a mandated national OHS endorsed Assessment Instrument. It has come to our attention that some states and territories believe the new Assessment Instruments are not AQTF compliant. Easy Guides Australia has no opinion on whether this is factual or not. We do make the following comment however. When Easy Guides Australia prepares learning materials for the new high risk units, we must make sure that our materials (training tasks, review questions,practical assessments etc) are AQTF compliant. We have a mapping document (Audit Tool) that shows where the materials cover the Elements, Performance Criteria (PC), Required Skills (RS), Required Knowledge (RK) and Critical Aspects of Evidence (CAE). An RTO using our materials cannot pass the audit to get a licence class on scope unless our materials meet the requirements of the unit of competency to be AQTF compliant. An RTO Easy Guides is doing some contract work for has shown us a copy of one of the Assessment Instruments. There is no evidence of any mapping to the Unit of Competency. Questions and practical tasks have not been tagged by Element, Performance Criteria etc. At face value there is no evidence in the way the Assessment Instrument has been set out that it is, or is not, AQTF compliant. The only way to determine AQTF compliance is for an individual to go through the laborious process of checking each question or task and determining what aspect of the Unit is being assessed. This task should have been integrated into the writing of the Assessment Instruments. This is what Easy Guides does in developing the new materials to support the introduction of the national high risk lice nce unit. It is a simple process to map the Assessment Instruments to the Units of competency to identify gaps and add additional information to ensure compliance. In summation, if Easy Guides Australia must undergo such rigor to ensure our learning materials are AQTF compliant, why should the final summative (Assessment Instrument) be subject to any less rigor. Footnote: Easy Guides Australia Pty Ltd fully supports the introduction of the new national high risk licence system. This editorial has been written in the spirit of a helpful observer. We have writing learning materials for this industry for over ten years now and we want to see the new system be the best it can be.