Independent assessment should underpin integrity in Australia’s VET system

Australia’s VET sector faces a pivotal challenge in maintaining trust in the qualifications it issues. Recent events suggest that the current model of providers doing their own assessments and the regulator not being aware of quality gaps, has created gaps in the sector’s integrity.

After media reports about abuses of Australia’s immigration system, the government launched joint enforcement action across multiple agencies (Operation Inglenook) and engaged Christine Nixon AO, APM to undertake a Rapid Review into the Exploitation of Australia’s Visa System. Her report was released to government in early 2023 (and to the public in October 2023) and led to a series of recommendations to address integrity concerns in parts of the sector.

After the release of the Rapid Review ASQA issued six sector alerts (between May 2023 and April 2024) and a subsequent alert encouraging tipoffs in February 2025.

In late 2024 ASQA cancelled the registration of four VET providers and, unusually, also cancelled the qualifications of many (but not all) of the thousands of qualifications these providers had collectively issued in the past couple of years.[1]ASQA did so because of serious concerns about inconsistent or even fraudulent assessment practices, which resulted in qualifications being awarded without proper training or assessment by qualified staff.

Subsequently, in their latest ASQA Update – ASQA noted that:

“ASQA continues to monitor provider compliance, targeting inadequate assessment practices, false or misleading marketing of RPL, gap training unavailability and the issuance of fraudulent qualifications. We have, and will continue to, take regulatory action against providers with non-compliant assessment or RPL practices, including removing providers from the sector who are found to have fraudulently issued qualifications.”

“As a result of some of our active investigations, there will be further instances that will require us to consider the legitimacy of individual qualifications issued by non-genuine providers over the coming months. It is ASQA’s responsibility to ensure students, industry, governments and the community have confidence in the integrity of qualifications issued by training providers.”

Reforms to improve the sector

Despite these serious issues in the sector, that is, thousands of cancelled VET qualifications and thousands more potentially to come… last week the Productivity Commission suggested that the following reforms would increase the flexibility and adaptability of Australia’s post-secondary education system:

  • “Improving recognition of prior learning and credit transfer mechanisms to make it easier for tertiary education students to have their existing qualifications and experience certified. This could enable more flexible education pathways, drive competition between course providers and support the growth of innovative education offerings such as microcredentials.
  • Increasing the rates of structured, non-formal work-related training by developing targeted measures to enable lifelong skill development and support the workforce to adapt to the future needs of our changing economy.”

It is unarguable that improved RPL and credit transfer are “promising avenues of reform” – but the Commission’s intentions can only be fully achieved if there is complete confidence in assessment integrity in the VET sector. To introduce reforms to make RPL more flexible and drive more competition between providers, without having confidence in the integrity of the sector, is to invite more integrity issues and fraud.

Independent assessment

Australia’s VET system has long emphasised flexibility and access – enabling a wide range of providers to assess learner competency, against industry-endorsed standards in national Training Packages. The downside of this decentralised model is that quality control relies exclusively on each provider’s integrity and capability, and on ASQA being able to effectively identify and act on serious problems in the system before they impact tens of thousands of students.

ASQA’s tip off line and additional government funding for integrity measures are welcomed, but they only allow ASQA to act after problems emerge.

And while an ASQA spokesperson is reported as telling the ABC that it “has secured MYEFO funding to develop a model to support the use of external (independent) validation of the assessment undertaken by high-risk providers… (and) This will be an additional regulatory tool used by ASQA moving forward”, the success of this new approach will be contingent on ASQA being able to successfully identify high risk providers.

In looking to a better future for the Australian VET sector, there is much we can learn from other comparable VET systems which do not have the same integrity issues we do. They do not rely on their regulators successfully identifying high risk providers and only focussing their regulatory attention on them. Instead they have put in place integrity measures which quality assure all of their providers and all of their delivery…

How other countries ensure credible skills assessment

  • Germany: Germany’s celebrated dual apprenticeship system provides a strong model for external assessment in VET. German apprentices do not receive their qualifications from the training provider they study with. Instead, every apprentice must pass independent examinations set by industry-governed bodies. Research on the German system notes that this arrangement is key to maintaining quality because training standards and quality are monitored directly by industry bodies. The result is a high level of trust in German vocational qualifications, both from employers (who know that graduates have cleared an objective hurdle) and from learners.

  • United Kingdom: Historically, many UK vocational qualifications have been administered by awarding organisations (eg City and Guilds), external to the teaching institution. More recently, a major reform of apprenticeships in England introduced a requirement for End-Point Assessments (EPAs). Under this system, an EPA is an impartial assessment of the apprentice’s skills, knowledge and behaviours as outlined in the relevant apprenticeship standard. Assessments are designed by employers in the sector and are conducted by independent bodies known as end-point assessment organisations (EPAOs). According to a leading UK skills expert, this independence “is essential to the quality and credibility of apprenticeships”.

  • New Zealand: With a smaller VET system but similar commitment to quality, New Zealand ensures consistent assessment standards and sector integrity through a combination of external moderation and centralised oversight. Providers deliver the training, and then industry-led Workforce Development Councils (WDCs) and the New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA) play a direct role in quality assurance as assessment decisions are being made. In practice, this means samples of student work and assessment decisions from each provider are regularly reviewed by external moderators from the NZQA and WDCs.

  • Canada: In Canada, VET is largely run at the provincial (state) level, and yet there is still a high degree of national consistency through the Red Seal program. Red Seal sets common standards for many skilled trades and under this program, apprentices can choose (or in some provinces are required) to sit a standardised exam which serves as an external validation of their skills. Because Red Seal exams are developed collaboratively by industry experts from across Canada and administered under controlled conditions, they create a trusted benchmark.

Toward stronger skill assessment in Australia

Learning from these international examples, Australian policymakers and VET sector leaders have a choice, Australia can either:

  • continue with the status quo and hope ASQA can successfully identify high risk providers and effectively play a role in the external moderation of their assessment decisions, or
  • follow the lead of other leading VET systems and introduce greater integrity (and a greater role for industry) across the board.

Australia already has independent skills assessment authorities – licensed by government to assess the skills of migrants. Their scope could readily be expanded.

We also have 10 Jobs and Skills Councils which have now had time to bed down relationships with industry and VET providers in the sectors they cover, and who could play more of a role in assessment decision-making/assessment moderation in relation to the Training Packages they have responsibility for.

And we also have a raft of industry professional associations like business chambers and unions who could play a role in the final assessments of VET graduates… So many credible options to introduce sector-wide integrity into Australian VET.

And how would we fund any changes?

Australian VET (whether government-funded, international student-funded or domestic fee-for-service) pays providers to teach, and to conduct summative (final) assessments. It would be straightforward to pay a small portion of those funds to the independent authorities for the final assessments…

All that’s missing is the will to make the change.

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[1] Despite many statements about integrity in the VET system focussing on international education (CRICOS) providers, only one of the four cancelled providers is a CRICOS provider. The other three delivered only to domestic students – this is an issue affecting the integrity of Australian VET not Australian VET delivered to international students. Some of these cancellation decisions (affecting providers and students) are being challenged in the Administrative Review Tribunal.