The standards have been Endorsed by COAG and enabled by NVET regulator act 2011. Section 22 Clause 3.6 applies to existing RTO, this clause applies to the implementation of the USI.
The benefits for RTOs is that there will only be one set of standards for RTOs in due course. This is great news for consultants as well!. It also means there will be one set of standards for the regulators. Interestingly TAC have decided to change the numbering of the standards, however the rest remains the same (apart from references to website that relate to TAC only). So any TAC registered RTOs can start reviewing the standards now and make any changes that need to occur.
TAC will be moving across to the new standards in April 2104, along with ASQA.
TAC has developed the following documents to provide guidance on the Standards for Registered Training Organisations (RTOs) 2015. The documents are available on the TAC website under the Standards for RTOs 2015 tab.
ASQA has a Users Guide A pre-print version of the users’ guide to the standards is available to download: Download Users’ guide to the Standards for Registered Training Organisations (RTOs) 2015 (pre-print version) (PDF 1.2 MB)
As far as implementing them into your RTO immediately, should you have a pending audit around the time that they come into play, ASQA will take a fair and reasonable approach and where there are new measures these will be considered. The rest of your compliance needs to be completed. Renewal applications will be submitted through ASQAnet based on processes in place at that time. They have completed a mapping of how the standards relate to each other.