Trainers and assessors who work in the VET sector and use nationally recognised training must meet the nationally agreed requirements outlined in AQTF Standard 1.4 (d) or SNR 15.4 (d) which states that trainers and assessors must continue to develop their VET knowledge and skills as well as their industry currency and trainer/assessor competence. A person who has vocational competency will be familiar with the content of the vocation and will have relevant current experience in the industry.
The trouble is so many people don’t. As a trainer and assessor myself, who has worked with a number of RTOs, I know that it is my responsibility. I maintain my own matrix, and provide to each of the RTOs who I work for. It is completed, and held in my file along with my resume, so if someone wants to see it I have easy access to it.
So is it that people are lazy, or is it the fact that people need guidance or support from their employer in how to complete the required document? I suspect it is the latter.
RTOs need to support their trainers and Assessors and get them to update their matrix. Depending on your industry sector, you need to determine what is current. In some industries, that change quickly and often, current means yesterday, in others that stay the same for 2-3 years, then this is your benchmark.
In my role as an enterprise RTO Manager I also made sure my Trainers and Assessors has a scheduled 2 week period where they were working on-the-job, and not just training someone to perform those skills. Yes, that was easier to do, as an enterprise RTO, however it is still doable for public and private RTOs. The cost of the Trainer and Assessor, still came out of my budget, however I was ensuring they had current skills. Perhaps this is something that RTOs could consider.
The argument I hear so often is “I train the stuff, why do I need to show it?” The auditors want to see you still have the capability to do the tasks, and working with the dimensions of competency, as a student would when working in the sector. So document what you are doing, down to the unit level. This way you have the evidence, and in all the cases I have known it gets through audit.