Completed student assessment items mean the actual piece(s) of work completed by a student or evidence of that work, including evidence collected for an RPL process. An assessor’s completed marking guide, criteria, and observation checklist for each student may be sufficient where it is not possible to retain the student’s actual work. However, the retained evidence must have enough detail to demonstrate the assessor’s judgement of the student’s performance against the standard required.
- Standard 1.8 of the Standards for Registered Training Organisations (RTOs) 2015, requires an RTO to provide quality training and assessment services across all of its operations.
- Among other things, this means that assessment (including recognition of prior learning) must:
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- meet the requirements of the relevant training package or accredited course, and
- be conducted in accordance with the principles of assessment and the rules of evidence, and
- meet workplace and, where relevant, regulatory requirements.
- While the examination of assessment tools at audit will determine whether an RTO has a plan in place to ensure the valid assessment of students, only the review of completed student assessment items will confirm the extent to which those plans have been implemented.
Therefore, ASQA will generally examine a sample of completed student assessment items at all audits except initial registration audits (ASQA, 2018).
An RTO is required to securely retain, and be able to produce in full at audit if requested to do so, all completed student assessment items for each student, as per the definition above, for a period of six months from the date on which the judgement of competence for the student was made.
The above ASQA direction makes it clear that the retention requirement is based on the date when the “judgement” was made on student’s competence (e.g. marking/grading of an assessment). This applies to each assessment item. While, assessments may happen at different intervals during a student’s enrolment, as best practice, RTOs should ideally retain all the original student work for six months after a student has completed a unit of competency.
RTOs must also be aware that there are different records keeping requirements for assessment checklists, competency outcomes/results, judgments, and student admin records.
For more information, download ASQA’s general direction on retention of student work: Download: Retention Requirements: ASQA