Since publishing the article Pre-use Assessment Review and the 2025 Standards for RTOs, we’ve had a steady stream of practical questions from RTOs trying to implement Standard 1.3 in the real world with limited time, mixed-quality resources, and constant pressure to just get it delivered.

This follow-up answers some of the most common questions we receive.

There has been much discussion around the requirements associated with “pre-assessment validation” of assessment tools, or “pre-use review” of assessment tools, or other terms that have been used interchangeably to refer to a process that Registered Training Organisations (RTOs) need to be implementing. This article focuses on the pre-use review (Standard 1.3) rather than the validation requirements of Standard 1.5.

Validation is one of those tasks that we tend to put to the bottom of the pile, especially as the 2015 Standards only require validation once within a 5-year cycle (with 50% of scope validated within 3 years). So why create a lengthy, time-consuming process that nobody has time for?