Today I wanted to share with you some discussions I have been having recently on continuous improvement and I have tried to summarise it here for you:
When you have an RTO you are required to demonstrate that you have in place constant monitoring of the RTO environment. You will be asked during your initial audit about your plans, and they will want to see evidence at later audits to show this is happening. It is expected that once registered your RTO will regularly review its policies, procedures and processes to ensure they continue to comply with the AQTF Standards and all relevant legislation. Compliance with these will assist your organisation to achieve the aim of providing quality training and meeting your client needs. Again your procedures will be reviewed during audit time
To achieve your continuous improvement your RTO needs to be developed on solid systems. Continuous improvement systems are an area that RTO’s often fall down in according to my conversations with accrediting bodies.
Although we do our best to develop effective high quality assessment strategies we always need to be open to the possibility of further improvement.
So what do Continuous improvement systems look like?
There isn’t one answer; instead there are many.
Continuous improvement could look like:
- Having documented policies and procedures.
- Having mechanisms in your policies and procedures that show how you collect regular, valid and reliable feedback from stakeholders, such as your students, staff and employers.
- Assessment that is regularly monitored, reviewed and improved.
- Have a method / process to ensure that the feedback you have collected is acted upon to bring about improvements, these could include meetings, forms, regular continuous improvement meetings, spreadsheets, a CRM.
- A procedure to show that regular moderation/validation plans and activities
- Regular review of student performance is undertaken with parties external to the operation of the RTO
For more information on setting up your RTO go to http://www.becomeanrto.com