TAE and the effects in VET

There is nothing like a last-minute TAE upgrade due to looming deadlines of the teach-out period to reveal the true standard of the current trainers and assessors in industry. Current upgrade enrolments are likely from the TAE40110 era or before. Units needed to upgrade to the superseded TAE40116 are usually the TAEASS401_403 upgrade and in some cases, potentially the TAELLN411 and or the TAEASS502 units. Remembering, that a lot of trainers and assessors were caught in the emergency upgrade that left them one step away from the full TAE40116, causing a frenzy in the industry around 2016 that benefited only the RTOs that participated, but left graduates and industry players with only the already previously obtained TAE40110 and the additional emergency units of TAELLN411 and TAEASS502 at best, not the full TAE40116, with the aim of wanting to obtain and maintain minimum compliance.

In comes TAE40122, superseding TAE40116, but not equivalent to TAE40110, so if you did not have the full TAE40116 it was not equivalent, certainly superseded and would eventually push you out of the market as a trainer / assessor with 2 superseded packages.

So here we are again, caught in the upgrade frenzy which is affording us a true perspective and insight of the standard of trainers and assessors out there in industry. Following, we will break down the issues point-by-point and highlight why they are an issue and how this will impact every other industry that those trainers and assessors operate in.

As always, we are happy to invite discussions on any of the points, but the perspective is first-hand, being on the frontline as a TAE trainer and assessor, being active with many RTOs as a compliance officer and working with ASQA auditors and remediation daily.

• IT skills are deficient with many of the trainers & assessors – this is both surprising and puzzling, given that the Covid lockdowns forced us to become experts in video conferencing training and get very familiar with the efficiencies of IT and more effective ways of communicating with and supporting our learners almost overnight. Paper-based learning was abandoned, as digital platforms and submissions took over. However, we still have many trainers and assessors that are not able to do the appropriate spell and grammar checks and lack the skills to professionally present their assessment submissions. Many hours are spent sifting through either a physical mess of paperwork or digital documents, where in some cases the upgrading TAE learner has even managed to scramble the formatting of the documents, or remove critical aspects of the assessment tool.
• Extensive use of AI or plagiarism – many of the assessments submitted are reliant extensively on AI – and we will have more on how to identify this in a later article. Now, if anyone should know the rules and the standards and code of practice we have to adhere to, it should be existing industry trainers and assessors. So, you can imagine our surprise, when we are receiving assessments where the responses are primarily AI generated. We as trainers and assessors ought to know that the learner’s work must be their own, and they must be able to demonstrate, that they have understood the subject matter or concept, and that they are able to put principles into practice. This usually relies on the learner explaining something in their own words and potentially give workplace relevant examples. Yet here we are, we have industry trainers and assessors themselves essentially breaking a cardinal rule. What gives us a guarantee, that they apply the rules to their learners in assessment practices? And does this put these trainers and assessors at a sufficiently professional level to be practicing in the industry?
• Another common practice is screen shots of answers and cutting and pasting them into place for the responses. Again, that does not demonstrate that they know and understand the answers. It simply demonstrates that the learner is able to search and select a given text and cut and paste it in place. In most cases we find, the response is not the required answer and does not address the question, and they get marked as being incorrect, as well as being in breach of the Assessment Principle – “Authentic”.
  
  Increased pressures by RTOs to issue certificates and conclude the learning in time and within the teach-out period and increasing their completion rates for improved statistical data collection, added to the assessors being time poor, a lot of these issues are not always detected or indeed addressed or remedied.
  
  It of course raises the other issue, that these trainers and assessors doing their upgrades are in fact severely deficient in the skills and knowledge that they ought to have in order to practice in industry. This deficiency appears to originate from the TAE40110 era, where a lot of RTOs had TAE on scope and it was common industry practice, to issue the qualifications without sufficient learning (volume of learning) and resulting insufficient skills and knowledge. Add to this, that trainers and assessors are notoriously remiss of undertaking professional development both in their vocational areas and TAE / VET, we now have trainers and assessors who’s skills are severely deficient.
  
• Disorganization and lack of digital hygiene and filing convention – it should be expected, that at Certificate IV TAE level and higher, that trainers and assessors understand the importance of following assessment tools and instructions, arranging things in logical order ready for submission, and ensuring that filename conventions and filing systems are followed to support an efficient assessment process for the assessor. Many submissions have seen assessment workbooks dismantled and submitted in a non-logical and disorganised manner, with no filing conventions. Often, each document has to be opened, identified and mapped to be able to ascertain what has been submitted and what part of the assessment it applies to. This disorganised approach is also making it difficult for the TAE learner to ascertain whether they have addressed every aspect of the assessment and whether it has been addressed sufficiently. If this is their practice for their own work, how can they be expected to run a tidy assessment system with their own learners?

This is just a small snapshot of what has been witnessed in this latest round of TAE upgrades. Assessing as a result has been a nightmare and extremely time consuming. How can this seemingly massive gap be addressed and remedied? This of course has a substantial impact on all other industry sectors that these trainers / assessors operate in and will impact the level of graduates on-flowing from there. Eventually this will impact the quality of workmanship and outcome throughout every industry, and consequently production outcomes and reputation.

In some instances, it may be better if the learner enrols in the TAE40122 and refreshes their knowledge and skills by undertaking the new qualification as a whole. Independent professional development in snippets may not necessarily bridge the required gaps and may not necessarily form a complete picture for the trainer and assessor if the historical gaps and currency of skills are too great.

Food for thought and certainly worth a discussion moving forward, especially for those who are interested and support quality in VET.

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