Introduction

As a Registered Training Organisation (RTO), how well do you meet your learners' needs?

As an Australian Quality Training Framework (AQTF) auditor, how well do you assess whether RTOs meet their learners' needs?

This Guide can help you review how you do these things and make improvements.

It provides useful information and trigger questions for reviewing what you currently do.

Purpose of this Guide

This Guide is part of a suite of three resources on equity and the AQTF.  The accompanying resources are:

• Working with Diversity: Quality training for Indigenous Australians
• Working with Diversity: Quality training for people with a disability.

If you are an RTO, these resources will help you decide how you can:

• meet your equity obligations under the AQTF
• provide a quality service to a diverse range of learners
• become a training provider of choice for a broad cross-section of clients
• meet your legislative and national policy equity obligations.

If you are an AQTF auditor or working with an RTO, these resources will help you assist RTOs in these areas.

This Guide is not intended to show RTOs the requirements for compliance with the AQTF Standards for Registered Training Organisations: that is the role of the Standards themselves assisted by the AQTF Evidence Guide for Registered Training Organisation and Auditors.  Instead this Guide focuses on how to better meet the needs of learners and on the continuous improvement aspect of the AQTF.

Why is this Guide needed?

All RTOs are required to meet their equity and access obligations; research shows they do not share a common understanding of equity and access, and that AQTF auditors too have a range of understandings. 

This Guide is designed to encourage a shared view and to achieve improved outcomes for all learners within the vocational education and training (VET) sector. 

Each RTO's scope of registration and scale of operations will differ; their clients may be very different too and their approaches to delivery and assessment will vary as will their systems and evidence of compliance with AQTF requirements.  Despite these variations the same access and equity obligations must be addressed by each RTO.

Training statistics show that a number of groups within our community are still not gaining the full benefits of the VET system.  More needs to be done for these groups.