The Australian Skills Quality Authority or ASQA is the highest managing body in-charge of the regulation of Vocational Education and Training (VET) providers nationwide.

1. What an Aspiring Vocational Student
Needs to Know About ASQA

2. The Australian Skills Quality Authority or ASQA is the recently authorized sector in the
national government of Australia, which was made in-charge of the vocational
education and training (VET) providers nationwide. This sector now effectively manages
the implementation of the AQTF (Australian Quality Training Framework) and the
AVETMISS (Australian Vocational Education and Training Management Information
Statistical Standards) among the training providers.
From the recent count, ASQA holds and manages around 5000 RTOs or Registered
Training Organizations all over Australia. These RTOs are the nationally approved VET
providers, the courses and students of which are properly monitored by the ASQA.
If you are an aspiring vocational student, it will be very helpful for you to consult ASQA’s
national database of RTOs. The list of registered VET providers is therein given, along
with the courses these providers are offering.
Aside from being the board which ultimately registers VET providers as official RTOs of
the country, ASQA also regulates those providers which offer training for international
students. If you are not an Australian resident and would like to enroll in an Australian
VET provider, it would help you ascertain the quality of a target provider if you can
make sure it has been registered by the ASQA as an able international VET organization.
Among the bases for a VET provider to be registered as an RTO by the ASQA is the
provider’s compliance to the AVETMISS standards. These standards refer to the set of
information collection, formatting and submission rules to be followed by the RTO when
recording and managing student data. The continuity achieved once such standards are
followed makes it easier for the National Center for Vocational Education Research
(NCVER) to make statistical analyses of the country’s VET performance. The NCVER
validation software is then used as the means for providing data to the collection held
by NCVER. Again, these are among the requirements to be passed by the aspiring RTO to
gain approval from the ASQA. In the same way, these are some of the things that the
aspiring vocational student must find in his target VET provider.
So then, whenever a VET provider is a registered training organization, it certainly is an
ASQA-approved provider, and is hence a safe haven for aspiring vocational students.

3. Also, the student is assured of enrolling for nationally recognized and accredited courses
from such providers. Furthermore, there may be, through such RTOs, grants or open
applications for government funding among certain qualified students. The ASQA is thus
the highest managing body for such grants and ultimately for the VET trainings they are
granted for, to be made available.