COVID-19: Guidance for providers

To keep your staff and students safe during COVID-19, you may need to make adjustments to your delivery and assessment practices, such as:

• adopting distance delivery methods
• conducting remote assessment
• offering simulated workplace training or workplace assessment.

We have developed advice and guidance on common areas to help maintain the quality of training and assessment when making changes.

Adjustments to delivery and assessment still need to meet all conditions and requirements of the training product. This may mean there isn’t a suitable adjustment for some courses.

Some courses are subject to changed advice to make them ‘COVID Safe’. For example, the Australian Industry and Skills Committee (AISC) has provided specific advice on the delivery of first aid units of competency from the HLT Training Package, particularly about training and assessing CPR using ventilations. We encourage you to check for any specific advice for the training products you deliver.

If students or staff can’t attend an external workplace it may be necessary to defer training and assessment until access to the workplace becomes available, to meet mandatory training or assessment conditions.

In some cases, simulated workplaces may be an option – we have published guidance on using workplace simulation.

Our advice on Rising to the challenges of delivering in a changed world also offers guidance on workplace training and assessment.

If your staff are working from home, you must ensure adequate resources are available to continue to meet your regulatory obligations. This means your student management systems must allow staff to record and monitor student progression, provide student support, and issue students their student records without delay.

We encourage all providers to consider the significant stress the pandemic has caused students, both financially and in terms of mental health.

You continue to have an obligation to consider the concerns of your students, and to work with them to resolve issues.

Maintaining regular contact with students is key to managing concerns, particularly when students are not engaged in face-to-face delivery. You should consider offering student contact outside ‘normal work hours’ by telephone and email.

All providers are able to market to, enrol and deliver to students who are living offshore. While studying offshore, students do not require a visa, and are not international students under the ESOS Act.

You can market approved CRICOS courses on the understanding that onshore delivery will occur once restrictions lift, however you must be very clear that this is a temporary arrangement and is subject to a change in Australia’s international travel policy.

You must notify us of any changes to contact details or events that affect your operations as soon as practicable (preferably within 20 working days after they happen). You can find out more about ASQA’s role and costs incurred when auditing offshore delivery sites.

CRICOS providers who have continued to deliver to students in Australia, or to students who have been issued a student visa but have not been able to enter Australia, can offer distance delivery under temporary flexible regulatory arrangements. As circumstances change and COVID-19 restrictions ease, these temporary arrangements will be reviewed.

The Department of Education, Skills and Employment has published regulatory information for universities VET, ELICOS and higher education providers who deliver courses on CRICOS.

You must continue to report changes to delivery and student circumstances for CRICOS students through PRISMS. The PRISMS website provides guidance which may assist.