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Assessment – Validation
Standards: Clause 1.9, 1.10, 1.11
a) when assessment validation will occur;
b) which training products will be the focus of the validation;
c) who will lead and participate in validation activities; and
d) how the outcomes of these activities will be documented and acted upon.
1.10. For the purposes of Clause 1.9, each training product is validated at least once every five years, with at least 50% of products validated within the first three years of each five year cycle, taking into account the relative risks of all of the training products on the RTO’s scope of registration, including those risks identified by the VET Regulator.
1.11. For the purposes of Clause 1.9, systematic validation of an RTO’s assessment practices and judgements is undertaken by one or more persons who are not directly involved in the particular instance of delivery and assessment of the training product being validated, and who collectively have:
a) vocational competencies and current industry skills relevant to the assessment being validated;
b) current knowledge and skills in vocational teaching and learning; and
c) the training and assessment qualification or assessor skill set referred to in Item 1 or 3 of Schedule 1.
Industry experts may be involved in validation to ensure there is the combination of expertise set out in (a) to (c) above
Related documents/links
ASQA Fact sheet – Conducting validation
ASQA website: How and when to validate
ASQA website: Fair and impartial validation
ASQA website: Validating products from the TAE package
QCI considerations
- Does your RTO have a documented schedule for validation of training products?
- How does your RTO ensure that the validation process is impartial?
- How are validation activities documented?
- Where is this documentation kept?
Validation is not moderation
Moderation is a quality control process aimed at ensuring that there is consistency across assessor judgments. Moderation looks at assessment judgements that have already been made. Would the reviewer have given this evidence the same result that the assessor did? The outcome may be a validation of the assessor’s judgement.
Validators
- Validators can be internal or external to the organisation.
- A trainer/assessor who is directly involved in the delivery and assessment of the training product in that workplace cannot validate that training product.
- Validation can be undertaken by one person or by a team of people who collectively hold:
- vocational competence in occupation as evidenced by completed vocational competence matrix
- current industry skills in the occupation as evidenced by PD activities
- current knowledge/skills in vocational teaching and learning evidenced by PD activities
- current TAE Certificate IV in Training and Assessment
Scenario 1
XYZ RTO has two employees who have developed the assessment tools collaboratively for BSBPEF402 Develop personal work priorities. They are both very proud of their efforts. Only one of them delivers and assesses this unit. However, the manager says that neither of them can participate in the validation activities associated with the unit because they were both involved in the development of the assessment materials.
Question
Is the manager correct?
No, the manager is not correct. The employee who is not delivering or assessing in this unit is able to participate in the validation activities that are a review of ‘assessment practices and judgement’.
Scenario 2
XYZ RTO delivers three units that have a licensed outcome, but they also have a large number of qualifications on scope. Their validation schedule has assessments in these three units being reviewed every five years.
Question
Is this sufficient oversight of ‘assessment practices and judgements’ in these three units?
No. Units with a licensed outcome are regarded as having a much higher risk of something being a problem that units that do not. Therefore, the timeframe between assessment review activities needs to be much shorter than five years.