Professional Development under the 2025 Standards

A requirement for some staff to complete professional development (PD) and currency activities to maintain or increase their VET and industry skills and knowledge (“CPD requirements”) has always been a part of the standards that RTOs must meet. But the 2025 Standards have kicked things up a notch in terms of CPD requirements. 

What are the CPD requirements?

Under the Standards for RTOs 2015, only trainers and assessors were required to meet CPD requirements. Most good RTOs invested in CPD for all staff, but to be compliant, only trainers and assessors HAD to complete PD and industry currency activities. But to meet Outcome Standard 3.1 of the 2025 Standards, an RTO must facilitate access to CPD opportunities for ALL staff through VET workforce management. 

Meeting Outcome Standards 3.2 and 3.3 also requires particular CPD for trainers and assessors (illustrated below).

What to do?

There is no one-size-fits-all CPD program for an RTO. CPD activities should be planned based on an individual’s role, goals, and identified development needs (following a training needs analysis or similar). 

That said, there are some general topics that almost all CPD plans will have to cover:

Legislative Requirements

To meet Outcome Standard 4.2, an RTO must demonstrate it supports staff to understand the components of the Outcomes Standards that are relevant to their role:

• Therefore, most CPD plans should include initial and/or refresher education and training on legislative obligations relevant to the person’s role, as well as how their role contributes to meeting these requirements. For example, marketing and advertising staff should be educated on the requirements of Outcome Standard 2.1, and Division 1 (Information and Transparency) of the Compliance Requirements.

• If your RTO must comply with additional regulatory frameworks in addition to the 2025 Standards (such as the ESOS Framework for CRICOS and ELICOS providers, or state-funded training programs), ensure that CPD activities incorporate education and training on the role-relevant aspects of these frameworks. 

Training and Assessment Skills and Knowledge

All trainers and assessors must undertake CPD activities that keep their skills and knowledge relating to training and assessment current. Under the 2025 Standards, this explicitly includes skills and knowledge relating to ‘engaging and supporting VET students’. 

Wellbeing, Diversity and Inclusion

One area in which the 2025 Standards differ substantially from the Standards for RTOs 2015 is the more explicit requirements in terms of supporting students with disability (Outcome Standard 2.4), promoting and supporting diversity, explicitly including cultural safety for First Nations people (Outcome Standard 2.5) and supporting student wellbeing (Outcome Standard 2.6). As such, it would be good practice for RTOs to incorporate activities that develop skills and knowledge in these areas into staff CPD plans. For example, ADCET provides resources on supporting VET students with disability.  

What kinds of activities count as CPD?

ASQA has identified a range of activities that can help demonstrate CPD requirements are met, including:

• employment or placement (paid or volunteer/unpaid) in a relevant workplace (for example, a cookery trainer maintaining casual employment as a cook/chef)

• accredited training (leading to the award of an AQF Statement of Attainment or certificate)

• non-accredited formal training (such as completing PD sessions offered by VETNexus, RTO Consulting, VETQI, vetr, the VET Development Centre, VELG, Skills Education and more)    

• peer development (for example, participating in validation, having a focused discussion with colleagues, or participating in industry networks or communities of practice)

• attending industry and/or VET-sector conferences and events

• personal research and development (for example, reading industry journals or listening to VET podcasts)

• participating in a mentoring arrangement with a more experienced colleague (it’s important to note that simply working as a trainer and assessor does not count toward meeting CPD requirements) 

The important thing to note is that, regardless of the activity type, good-quality evidence of CPD activities must be retained (see 'How to demonstrate compliance?' below).

How much to do? 

Unlike professions like teachers (at least 20 hours), psychologists (at least 30 hours), lawyers (at least 10 ‘units’ or ‘points’) or engineers (at least 150 hours every 3 years), there is no clearly defined ‘magic number’ for how much CPD trainers/assessors or other RTO staff must complete. 

It is up to RTOs to determine for themselves. Factors that might influence how much CPD is required include:

1. Staff experience: A staff member who is new to VET may need to complete more CPD activities than an experienced staff member.

2. Staff role: Trainers and assessors have more explicit requirements and may need to do more CPD than staff working in other roles.

3. RTO profile: If the RTO delivers training products from a dynamic, fast-changing industry, to a variety of higher-needs cohorts, and/or in a variety of sectors (apprenticeships/traineeships, CRICOS, state-funded etc.), staff may need to complete more CPD to keep up their knowledge and skills and perform effectively.

Another thing to consider is how to measure the amount of CPD that staff complete. There are 3 common ways:

1. Time-based: Record the amount of time spent completing the activity. E.g. a 1-hour webinar = 1 hour of CPD activity. 

2. Number-based: Record how many activities were completed, regardless of length.

3. Point/unit-based: Assign a value to CPD activities based on activity type, complexity, format, etc. For example, a 1-hour webinar earns 5 points, 1 day of working in the industry earns 25 points, and attaining 1 unit of competency earns 20 points.  

Personally, I think an annual requirement of at least 10 hours of role-specific CPD (for non-trainers/assessors) or 10 hours of VET skills and knowledge activities AND 15 hours of industry activities (for trainers/assessors) should be the minimum that RTOs should consider. RTOs should try to encourage staff to complete a range of activity types as well (e.g. mandate that not more than (x) hours/per cent can be any one activity type).

How to demonstrate compliance? 

To demonstrate that it is meeting the Outcome Standards relevant to CPD, an RTO should keep good-quality evidence of CPD activities. Exactly what evidence is kept will vary from RTO to RTO, but an RTO should be able to demonstrate:

• What was done (staff member, activity description, date, activity ‘provider’)

• When it was done

• The duration or ‘value’ of the activity (hours, points, etc.)

• The relevance of the activity to the staff member’s role (“what did you do?” “what did you learn?” “how can/will you apply the skills/knowledge you gained to your role?”)

• For trainers and assessors, as relevant, the training products (ideally at the unit of competency level) to which the activity relates 

• Proof that the activity occurred (this could a certificate, statement of attendance, signed meeting minutes document, marked-up copy of an article, reflective journal entry, timesheet or payslip etc.) 

• Any relationship to outcomes or improvements in practices within the RTOs. For example, a PD on accessibility was attended, which then meant that alt-text has been added to all images, heading styles used in all documentation and closed captions on all videos. The feedback from students demonstrates that they are utilising screen readers, or are hearing-impaired and are using closed captions, and that they are accessing the resources more readily.

CPD evidence should be well organised - it is not much good having a jumble of files haphazardly saved in a folder. Word and Excel templates can be used to organise CPD evidence, but VET-specific software products such as RTOSafe make the process of managing CPD even easier.  

Quick Tips

1. Read ASQA’s Quality Area 3 Practice Guides.

2. Assign Responsibility: Clearly document and communicate responsibilities and accountabilities relating to CPD in your RTO’s Quality Management System: Who plans CPD activities? Who completes them? Who makes sure they are completed? And so on 

3. Set a Standard: Don’t leave staff to guess what or how much CPD they need to do. Clearly define acceptable CPD activities, evidence for each activity type, and amount requirements (expressed in hours, number of activities, or points) for the RTO overall, particular roles, and/or individuals. 

4. Plan it Out: Collaborate with the individual or team concerned to ensure CPD activities are relevant, effective, and not merely a box-ticking exercise. Monitor and manage staff progress against their CPD plan.

5. Invest in Making it Easy: The more support staff are given to access, complete and document CPD activities, the more likely they are to complete them.

6. As an RTO, consider providing financial support (e.g. through organisational subscriptions to CPD providers, CPD budgets/reimbursement/cost sharing for approved activities) and allocate work time to complete CPD activities (rather than requiring staff to complete CPD in their own time).

7. Invest in user-friendly information systems and/or carefully design templates and processes to facilitate easy recording of CPD activities. 

*The featured image for this blog is AI-generated.