Editor's Blog

Concerns that some RPL providers are approving unskilled workers have resulted in both employers and unions labelling the RPL’s ‘tick and flick’ process as a rort and theft, according to an ABC report.

Some RPL providers commonly advertise quick and easy recognition of qualifications for the purposes of migration skills assessments. However, unions and employers have now banded together to protest against what they are claiming is a multi-million dollar rort in the private vocational education sector by some low quality RPL providers who are simply ticking off a checklist of skills they think that the worker already has in order to minimise the cost of actually delivering the required training – hence pocketing government funding and other fees without providing the training.

Recognition of Prior Learning, known as RPL, is an assessment process that converts work experience into Australian qualifications. Generally, anyone with a trade background, at least five years industry experience and worked in the trade in the last three years, may apply to have their skills recognised nationally through the scheme.

According to the ABC report the number of RPL providers have tripled in 2 years on the back of the $7.5 million the government pays to fund the scheme. The number of providers leaped from 19 businesses in 2012 to 54 in 2014.

Ian Curry from the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union said the scheme was critical for workers and employers but there are some providers rorting the system by passing people without the requisite skills: "Absolutely it's a rort, and as I say, it constitutes a theft, a theft against the Commonwealth by not delivering people with the skills the economy requires but it's [also] a theft of those workers' aspirations."

The regulator of VET providers, the Australian Skills Quality Authority (ASQA) is looking into the matter and has called for anyone with information or concerns about the quality of RPL to come forward.

A spokesman for ASQA told the ABC, "Given that RPL is one form of assessment … there should be no variation in the competence of people being issued qualifications regardless of the way the assessment was undertaken."