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Dealing with an RTO

Once you’ve selected your RTO, it is really important that you make it clear which services you want.

Partnership Arrangments

You may wish to establish a partnership arrangement whereby you share outcomes.

You might partner with an RTO to take advantage of their individual strengths and relieve yourself of unfamiliar training and assessment administration. You might provide equipment, processes, mentors and experienced workers; the RTO would arrange the training, supervise it, conduct the assessment and issue the qualification.

In a partnership, the RTO must develop and monitor a formal agreement outlining the responsibilities of all parties. The quality of the training and assessment is the full responsibility of the RTO.

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Contracting an RTO

Like any service you purchase, make it clear in your negotiations which service and the level of service you expect the RTO to provide.

The RTO should provide you with their code of conduct. This outlines their commitment to their clients.

For further information about the obligations of an RTO see 'Maintaining RTO status'.

Some questions you may wish to ask the RTO include:

  • Over what time frame will the service be delivered?
  • How many of my people will be involved?
  • Who will keep the records?
  • When will I get progress reports?
  • What will it cost?
  • Is anything expected of me?
  • Where will the service take place?
  • Will my people be off-the-job?
  • Are there any licensing or regulatory issues which need to be sorted out?
  • How will appeals of assessment decisions be dealt with?
  • What level of performance can I expect from the training?

Once all of this has been agreed upon, it needs to be captured in writing.

The level of service your RTO agrees to applies to all types of arrangements including apprenticeships/traineeships.

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Obligations of the RTO

Once you have a contract or agreement with an RTO you should expect that the RTO:
  • Has a code of conduct;
  • Respects the confidentiality information gained within the organisation;
  • Provides the service to the standards outlined in the contract/agreement;
  • Deals with concerns and complaints as they arise.