Registered Training Organisation (RTO) Policies

Welcome to Sydney Community College’s Registered Training Organisation (RTO 90054). As a not-for-profit social enterprise, the College has, at the heart of its mission, the provision of affordable and accessible education and training programmes that develop individual and community capacity and support inclusivity.
To achieve this through our RTO, the College pursues a strong quality assurance, compliance, consumer protection and student support ethos and partners with like organisations and government to deliver learning programmes for those with tailored or specific needs who might otherwise miss out.

The College will ensure it will:

Fully inform potential and current students about its training products and services for individuals to be equipped to make informed decisions;
Assist students to choose a VET course that is suitable and appropriate for their needs;
Ensure student enrolment processes are tailored to specifics of particular courses to ensure that students understand course requirements and enjoy a quality training experience;
Provide a professional, fair and timely complaints and appeals process for general and course-related complaints;
Guarantee completion of training services in accordance with compliance requirements for VET training, Government funding contracts and our refunds, withdrawals and fees policies;
Maintain appropriate insurances including public liability insurance;
Maintain and manage compliance with other legislation that protects our students and stakeholders by creating a positive learning environment that is safe, secure and lawful including for health and safety, protection against harassment, bullying, discrimination and victimisation and the right to privacy and other safeguards;
Maintain information and policy updates about how our students are protected as consumers.

Sydney Community College is committed to seeking, listening and responding to feedback and early resolution of issues as part of identifying opportunities for improvement. Our RTO Manager can be contacted by phone on 02 8752 7555 or by email at customer.service@sydneycommunitycollege.edu.au. We also have a live chat function to speak with our customer service officers.

Students also have the right to raise concerns or make a complaint to regulatory and contractual bodies including Training NSW, NSW Fair Trading, the Australian Skills Quality Authority (ASQA) and the NSW Ombudsman.

Please take the time to read these Training Policies and our Quality Assurance System (QAS) information to understand how we can assist you in your training needs. Our RTO Manager is our Consumer Protection Officer - see contact details above.

Remember! Apply for your Unique Student Identifier (USI).

What is a USI? The USI is your student number for doing VET courses. What does it do? It links all your VET achievements regardless of where in Australia you did a course. It will also give you easy to access and secure digital transcripts of your VET achievements and gives you more control over your VET information. Creating a USI is free. So, go now and get a USI.

Glossary of terms in Vocational Education and Training (VET)
Student access and support
Privacy
Quality Training and Assessment

Glossary of terms in Vocational Education and Training (VET)

AQF: Australian Qualifications Framework.
ASQA: Australian Skills Quality Authority. ASQA polices all states and territories apart from Victoria and Western Australia. ASQA was formed under the National Vocational Education and Training Regulator Act 2011.
Assessment: An activity or activities designed to gather evidence to prove competence.
Assessor: A qualified person, quite often your trainer, who will conduct the assessment activity with you.
Certificate: A qualification showing that a student has achieved learning outcomes as described in the Australian Qualifications Framework AQF. There are four levels of certificates; they range from Certificate I (basic fundamental knowledge and understanding in a narrow area of work and learning) to Certificate IV (broad factual, technical and theoretical knowledge in a specialised field of work and learning). A certificate must be printed in a format that prohibits false reproduction.
Competent: The consistent application of knowledge and skill to the standard of performance required in the workplace. It includes the ability to apply skills and knowledge to new situations and environments.
LLN: Language, literacy and numeracy. Sometimes referred to as Foundation Skills.
Nationally Recognised Training: Any program or training that leads to vocational qualifications and credentials recognised across Australia
Qualification: A formal certification, issued by a relevant approved body, in recognition that a person has achieved learning outcomes or competencies relevant to identified individual, professional, industry or commercial needs.
RCC: Recognition of Current Competencies (see also RPL as used interchangeably)
RPL: Recognition of Prior Learning
RTO: Registered Training Organisation. RTOs are regulated by legislation administered by ASQA
SoA or Statement of Attainment: a record of the units of competency achieved where a full qualification is not attained, issued by the RTO in a format that prohibits false reproduction
Standards for Registered Training Organisations 2015: The rules that each RTO, registered under ASQA, must comply with to maintain RTO registration.
Transcript: the list of the units of competency achieved in the qualification issued by the RTO in a format that prevents false reproduction
Unit of competency: Is the specification of knowledge and skill, and the application of that knowledge and skill, to the standard of performance expected in the workplace. Qualifications are made up of units of competency. A unit of competency is the smallest VET component that can be assessed and recognised.
VET: Vocational and Education Training (sometimes referred to as the VET Framework)
WHS/OHS: Work Health Safety, also interchangeable with Occupational Health and Safety

Student access and support

Access and Equity

SCC's RTO adopts and follows policies and procedures that treat all students fairly and equitably following all relevant legislation. We seek to create a training and education environment free from all forms of discrimination and harassment and which enables all students to understand the education program in which they are enrolled - or wishing to enrol - to their full potential.

Our policies and procedures aim to promote fair and equal access for all students and potential students regardless of characteristics such as their gender, sexuality, race, nationality, ethnic background, age, marital status, religion, pregnancy, political convictions, physical or intellectual disability or impairment. In disability service provision, SCC complies with the requirements of the Disability Standards for Education and has certified quality standards consistent with the NSW Disability Services Standards, which are aligned with the National Standards for Disability Services and the Disability Inclusion Act 2014.

If you need further information on any of the above matters, please contact the RTO Manager on 02 8752 7555 or email in confidence to The College Principal at principal@sydneycommunitycollege.edu.au.

Student Support Services

When you choose SCC, you won't be alone in your journey. Whether you need career advice, counselling, learning assistance or access to study resources, we at the College aim to make your experience enjoyable and productive. Depending upon your study interests and needs, we can assist with:

course selection and enrolment;
general career guidance;
assistance to identify the most appropriate support for special needs students;
help with study skills such as additional tutor support through telephone and email assistance and group study days;
work experience placement through our volunteer resource centre partnerships;
career and business planning support through mentoring, pathways planning and guest speakers in related industries;
advice on courses designed to improve your English language and literacy skills;
advice on courses designed to improve your numeracy skills;
advice about recognition of your other skills and qualifications, including overseas qualifications; and
Interpreter services including Auslan.

If you need further information, please contact the RTO Manager or Customer Service on 02 8752 7555

Unique Student Identifier (USI)

An important step in your enrolment process is to apply for your USI.
What is a USI? The USI is your student number for doing VET courses.
What does it do? It links all your VET achievements regardless of where in Australia you did a course and gives you easy to access and secure digital transcripts of your VET achievements. It gives you more control over your VET information. Creating a USI is free.
So go online now and get a USI.

Fees and Fee Protection

Per the Standards for Registered Training Organisations (RTOs) 2015, SCC does not collect more than $1500 in pre-paid fees for courses leading to a VET qualification. Register your interest on the website in one of our courses and an SCC staff member will be in contact with you to discuss your learning needs, fees for courses and our refunds policy. Ask also about our instalment plan for payment of your fees. We are here to help.

Privacy

SCC adheres to the thirteen Australian Privacy Principles issued by the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC). The College is committed to the inclusion of people with disability for their value and participation in the community and also adheres to the National Standards for Disability Services in keeping the personal information of those who access its programmes secure and confidential under the Standards.

Keeping information secure is a priority for the College. The College respects the privacy of both its students and its staff. Information provided by individuals to the College is to facilitate access to (including enrolment) and participation in the College's education and training courses. The College takes all steps to ensure that the personal details of its students and staff are not released to unauthorised persons or organisations and personal information received by the College is kept secure in appropriate filing systems and record repositories before the ultimate destruction of the records. If you have an urgent concern that the personal information collected by the College is incorrect and/or is not properly secure please notify principal@sydneycommunitycollege.edu.au.

Privacy and College websites

All Sydney Community College’s websites automatically collect a certain amount of personal information about you when you are browsing or otherwise using its website/s. The College uses the data collected for statistical and business purposes such as diagnosing a fault and improving our services. Any information collected by the College through automated mechanisms does not identify individuals and will only be used for the purpose for which it was collected in accord with this Privacy Statement. The data is not accessible except to authorised staff. The information which is automatically collected may be published as aggregated (de-identified) information to assist with improving the services offered by the College through the website.

The College has in place security measures based on a risk assessment process to protect against the loss, misuse, and alteration of the information. The College also encrypts some information and transactions.

Where you can access a College website only by using the secure login issued to you (teaching staff and students) the information about you which is held, or you add or amend, on that website, is protected by restricting access through that login. Accordingly, you must ensure that your password is not disclosed or made available to others. Relevant technical staff can access the logs created by servers to collect statistics, deal with faults and improve the service and investigations. If you have an urgent concern that the College IT system has been breached and personal information is not properly secure please notify principal@sydneycommunitycollege.edu.au.

Government requirements and protocols for use of your personal information

When you enrol as a student in a vocational education and training (VET) course with the College we need to collect your personal information as an important part of your enrolment. This is because the College is required by law to provide personal information about you to the NSW Government and to Federal Government’s National Centre for Vocational Education Research (the NCVER) and the Department of Education, Skills and Employment. The Department is authorised by law to collect, use and disclose your personal information to fulfil functions and activities related to VET courses. These functions and activities include:

administering VET, including program administration, regulation, monitoring and evaluation
facilitating statistics and research relating to education, including surveys and data linkage
understanding how the VET market operates, for policy, workforce planning and consumer information.

To understand more about this process please email VET-DataPolicy@dese.gov.au. To make a complaint or ask a question email privacy@dese.gov.au.

You must give written consent to the College to use your personal information and our VET course enrolment process includes your permission for your information to be used or disclosed in the way outlined above.

To correct your information

If you would like to seek access to or correct your personal information held by the College please contact us by email at principal@sydneycommunitycollege.edu.au.

Privacy and College marketing

The College will from time to time, send mail and email to students and past students for marketing. Students may at any time request that all such marketing cease. All requests will be promptly complied with. The College will from time-to-time contact students by other means such as post and telephone for College-related marketing activities. Students who request so will be removed from any marketing lists. No personal information is ever or will ever be disclosed to overseas recipients.

Secondary Marketing

The College does not allow for the use of student information for any secondary marketing not related to the College.

Quality Training and Assessment

Undertaking a VET Course

You are about to undertake a nationally recognised VET course through the College's Registered Training Organisation. What does this mean? SCC will ensure quality training and assessment strategies to meet your training needs through the delivery of VET accredited training requirements.

The Trainers and Assessors

To ensure SCC delivers effective and comprehensive training and assessment services to the public, we have highly qualified, experienced and committed professionals for every VET course offered. As a quality assured organisation, we also have a Professional Development policy and practice for our VET professionals to ensure they are continually building their capabilities to maintain and improve standards of delivery.

The Course

The delivery and the assessment of your course will be structured per the relevant Training Package guidelines and the qualification issued will be nationally recognised per the VET Quality Framework and Standards for RTOs 2015.

Your Attendance and Participation

Attending and participating in your scheduled classes is an essential part of the program delivery at the College. Your learning will occur in many ways; this includes the transmission of knowledge and skills directly from your tutor, as well as interactions with your fellow students. Satisfactory attendance is considered a minimum of 80% of the scheduled contact hours.

The Assessment

Your competency will be assessed against evidence that you can perform to the standard required of you in the workplace as specified in the training package for the VET course. We have a rigorous but flexible approach to assessment to support you in the learning process to achieve your qualification. If you are interested in how our trainers and assessors are employed and how they undertake their training and assessing duties, have a look at the 'Trainer and Assessor Information' under our 'Training' tab on your menu.

The Assessment Decision

Your assessment will be conducted in a valid, fair, reliable and flexible manner. Once you have completed the module, and have been assessed, you will be deemed “Competent” or “Not Yet Competent” by your assessor. Your fee covers two attempts to achieve competency. If you do not agree with the assessment result you are entitled to have your assessment task reviewed within 14 days of the initial decision. Please contact your trainer in the first instance, for further information on the assessment appeal process, or if you wish contact the main office and ask to speak to the RTO Manager or the Principal/CEO.

Assessment Reviews

Students are entitled to have any assessment task reviewed. Appeals must be made within fourteen days of receipt of the assessment result. The mechanisms of appeal are as follows:

Request a review of a marked assessment task by writing to the RTO Manager at customer.service@sydneycommunitycollege.edu.au seeking a formal review.

Once an appeal (in writing) has been received, the RTO Manager will consider the appeal application in consultation with the VET course trainer. Arrangements will then be made for the assessment task/answer to be reviewed.

You will be advised of the result of the assessment appeal in writing.

If, after review, you are still dissatisfied with your assessment task result, you can appeal to the SCC Principal in writing. This second appeal must be lodged with the College within fourteen days of you receiving the results of your first review. The Principal will then arrange for an independent review of the assessment result. The result of this review will be final.

Recognition Processes

Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) and Recognition of Current Competence (RCC)

What are RPL and RCC? This is an assessment process that takes into account a student’s acquired knowledge, skills, previous qualifications and experience to provide credit towards the qualification they are now seeking to undertake. SCC offers a fully supported recognition pathway to all students for all qualifications. The process will begin by providing students with a self-assessment questionnaire which:

outlines the performance criteria for each unit of competency in a qualification;
asks questions of the student about their experience concerning each performance criteria;
provides examples of evidence that might support the student experience.
There will be no charge for this document. This document is designed to help the student to assess their ability to proceed with the RPL/RCC process.
If the student decides to proceed they can enrol in an RPL/RCC Interview for which a small fee is payable. At the end of the interview, the student will have a clear understanding of whether to follow an RPL/RCC, training or combination pathway. The RPL/RCC fee for the Certificate IV in Training and Assessment is the same regardless of the chosen pathway.
RPL/RCC: The student can enrol in the Pathway course and pay the course fee less the fee for the interview. A Kit will be provided which includes a set of instructions and documentation to help the student through the process. Three face-to-face meetings will be offered throughout the process as well as ongoing email support.
Training: The student can enrol in face-to-face training and pay the course fee less the fee for the interview.
Combination: The student can enrol in individual modules for either RPL/RCC or face-to-face training and pay the course fee less the fee for the interview.
Assessment of all submitted evidence and/or assignments will be completed within six weeks of submission. Certificates are issued at the end of each course.

SCC recognises the AQF qualifications and statements of attainment issued to students by other Registered Training Organisations and may be able to grant credit to the student for training previously completed with another RTO. In this instance, the College requires copies of relevant qualifications before the commencement of a course. It is preferred that these qualifications are certified by a Justice of the Peace. If these are not certified by a JP, then the originals must be shown to College staff upon application for recognition. College management and all trainers and assessors are authorised verifiers of presented qualifications and identification. SCC administration staff are authorised to verify presented identification. SCC will verify the authenticity of the qualifications provided by contacting the issuing Registered Training Organisation.

Issuing your Certification

If you are participating in a nationally recognised training course and have satisfied your assessor that you have successfully met all the assessment criteria, you will be issued with a Qualification and/or a Statement of Attainment. A Qualification is a formal certification that you have completed a full program of learning. It will list the Qualification name and number and all the individual units of competency (subjects) you have completed. A Statement of Attainment may also be issued which recognises individual units of competency which you have achieved. These certificates will also carry your unique student identifying (USI) which is linked to the national VET Data Collection system. This means that a record of your training with SCC is stored to help your future study needs. For more information read About the Unique Student Identifier (USI)

In the case of a student who has lost or misplaced their Statement of Attainment or Certificate, a replacement will be issued free of charge. On the replacement, the date will remain the original date of issue. Request for re-issue of a qualification must be provided in writing to the SCC’s RTO Manager outlining the reason for the re-issue and providing supporting evidence. Any additional requests for lost or misplaced Statements of Attainment/Certificates will attract a fee, are subject to a request in writing and must be approved by the RTO Manager or the SCC Principal/CEO.

A Statement of Attendance may be issued for any course provided that, you have completed at least 80% of the course. A fee of $25 may be applied at the discretion of the College.

Complaints

It is a quality assured principle of Sydney Community College that its RTO will provide a high-level learning experience and assessment in line with national standards. If a student wishes to make a complaint/lodge a grievance about a VET course, the College will respond in a professional, fair and timely manner. Before making a complaint/grievance, however, it is strongly recommended that – wherever possible – a student discusses the issue with the class trainer and progresses to a claim only if the solution proposed by the class trainer is unsatisfactory.

If a student believes that the VET course has not been a quality learning experience, and/or an assessment has been unfair, then redress and/or refund may be sought. A student may seek redress or refund if she/he believes that:

The College has not delivered what was promised in the course promotion. (the promotion consists of, but is not limited to, the course description, learning programme and outcomes, venue and class times);
The quality of teaching is not up to a reasonable standard;
An assessment was unfair;
A student was treated unfairly;
The venue, training resources and/or equipment are not to a standard that would enable the achievement of the stated course outcome.

As stated, we encourage all enrolled students to speak first with their trainer about issues arising during their studies. The trainer will generally speak with a senior staff member about the issue in order to resolve it promptly. If the student prefers to speak to another staff member rather than their trainer or lodge a formal complaint in writing they will be asked to do so in writing and submit it to the RTO Manager at customer.service@sydneycommunitycollege.edu.au. Our RTO Manager will contact the student to discuss the issue, assistance proposed and next steps.

If a trainer or staff member is experiencing any difficulties caused by a student’s behaviour, they are encouraged to discuss their concerns with the RTO Manager or with a member of SCC’s Senior Management team.

Sydney Community College recognises that differences and grievances can arise from time to time.
The professional, fair and timely settlement of these matters is in the best interest of all parties concerned.

Should you wish to escalate your complaint further please do so to State Training Services either by e-mail at enquiries@smartandskilled.nsw.gov.au, telephone on 13 28 11 or in person at any Smart & Skilled Customer Support Centre.

Clients of a registered training organisation may also make an escalated complaint to the Australian Skills Quality Authority.

Claims for refund, credit or reassessment

To claim a refund, a credit or a reassessment under 1 – 5 above, a student must inform the College in writing identifying which areas 1-5 above have been below standard, providing a full explanation substantiating the claim. This may be done via email to customer.service@sydneycommunitycollege.edu.au.

If the student is seeking confidentiality then they may talk with or email the College Principal. The matter will be reviewed by a staff member who may seek further information including the opinion of the trainer/assessor, an independent subject matter expert, and a survey of opinions of other class members. The student will be notified by email of the decision within 14 days or if this is not possible, the student will be given a date when the matter will be decided.

Whilst a claim is under consideration, it is recommended that a student continue to attend the course where possible. If a student continues to attend a course or completes the course and then makes a claim, this will not prejudice a claim for refund or credit.

If the decision of the College is in favour of the student, an offer of refund or credit may be made. Depending on the nature of the complaint/grievance, this may be a full refund, a partial refund or an offer of credit to the same course in a future term or a reassessment of the student.

If the student remains unhappy with the College's dealing with the complaint/grievance, that student may lodge a complaint to Training Services NSW and/or the Australian Skills Quality Authority

Last reviewed and updated: June 2021