AFTER almost a decade of training students for work in the aged-care sector, Success Fast-Track has run afoul of the recently formed national skills regulator, raising questions about private training providers’ ability to deal with the regulatory regime.
Success Fast-Track offered aged-care training in Western Australia, Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria. According to CEO Brett Hilder, the company trained more than 7,000 students in the Certificate III in Aged Care, which allows them to work in the aged-care sector.
Regulation of vocational education and training was undertaken on a state-by-state basis until July last year, when the Australian Skills Quality Authority was established.
On February 13 this year, Mr Hilder received a letter from ASQA, advising him that it had sanctioned Success Fast-Track, meaning he could no longer enrol students, advertise for enrolments, or issue any qualifications without the written approval of ASQA.
Following an audit, ASQA found that Success Fast-Track was non-compliant in several areas. Flowever, Mr Hilder said he felt the audit did not give his company sufficient time to prepare.
“My national operations manager and the Melbourne branch manager, who was himself a qualified auditor said they felt we were not being allowed to represent our true level of compliance,” Mr Hlilder told WA Business News.
“[ASQA] stated that there were complaints about the quality and duration of our training and assessment; however we obtained documents under Freedom of Information that showed there were no complaints of that nature.”
Mr Hilder had ASQA’s findings reviewed by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal in August. At the hearing, Success Fast-Track was found to be non-compliant with standards relating to the appropriate level of industry consultation, record keeping and data collection, governance and professional development.
In his application to the tribunal, Mr Hilder said the sanction meant Success Fast-Track could no longer meet its financial commitments and would “be forced to close its doors on February 24”.
The AAT found that there was no evidence the non-compliance with these standards had “negatively impacted on the quality of training provided by the applicant”. It also said that, although a sanction was appropriate, Success Fast-Track should not be put out of business permanently, and that the sanction had to be minimal enough not to constitute ‘punishment” of Success Fast-Track.
Although he refused to comment on individual cases, ASQA chief commissioner Chris Robinson told WA Business News the regulator only sanctioned training organisations “in cases where there is quite serious and broad non-compliance”.
Mr Hilder said he had to lay-off 30 staff members a few weeks after the sanction was issued, and his company is now financially insolvent.
While Mr Hilder concedes he was non-compliant in the areas pointed out by ASQA, he said the sanction meant his business has collapsed financially, despite the AAT stating this was not a desirable outcome.
Under the current regulatory framework, WA maintains its own skills regulator, the Training Accreditation Council of WA. Because Success Fast-Track operates in a number of states, Mr Hilder said that there was initially some confusion about which standards he had to comply with.
“The standards are actually quite different, so we wanted to get clarification on whether we should complete our work with TAC requirements, or switch track to ASQA’s standards,” he said.
Mr Robinson said it was the responsibility of organisations to know what the law was and whether they were in breach of it.
He said audits focused on determining whether training organisations were meeting the required standards. He dismissed claims that the audit process ws unfair or too subjective.
“We do get complaints about our auditors when people get an adverse finding, but the validity of those complaints is another matter,” Mr Robinson said.
He said he understood being sanctioned was distressing.
“[However] ASQA’s focus is not on the welfare of providers; our focus is on the welfare of students, and ensuring they are getting the training they’re supposed to be getting,” Mr Robinson said. “Our obligation and the reason we’ve been set up is to put more teeth into the regulation of training providers to make sure they’re delivering what they are required to deliver by law.”
The Australian Council for Private Education and Training’s CEO, Claire Fields, said members nationally were supportive of the shift from state-based regulations, and there was only a small amount of training providers that had “hit a hurdle” with ASQA.
