ASQA Annual Report 2020–21 now available

ASQA’s Annual Report for the 2020–21 financial year has been tabled in the Australian Parliament. The report is a record of ASQA’s activities and performance for the previous financial year.  

In 2020–21, we continued to provide nationally consistent, risk-based regulation of vocational education and training (VET) in order to contribute to an informed, quality VET sector that meets Australia’s needs. 

It was a year of transition for ASQA, which saw us maintain our regulatory focus while working through a whole-of-agency reform program, undergoing an audit by the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) and continuing to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.  

Key activities and achievements in 2020–21:

• Responded to the COVID-19 pandemic with flexible and proportionate regulatory responses to reduce burden for providers, while maintaining appropriate safeguards for quality VET. We engaged with the sector and stakeholders in relation to the evolving risks, particularly in relation to the rapid transition of providers to online delivery in response to restrictions related to face-to-face learning. 
• Delivered on recommendations from the Rapid Review of the Australian Skills Quality Authority’s Regulatory Practices and Processes (April 2020), particularly as they relate to our strengthened engagement with the sector, improved performance assessment methodology, opportunities for review, and increased transparency about our areas of regulatory risk focus. We completed the implementation phase for 8 of the Rapid Review recommendations and commenced work on a further 13 recommendations. 
• Undertook foundational changes to our governance and organisational design to focus on best practice regulation and build regulatory capability across a broader range of interactions with providers; publishing our Regulatory Risk Framework to describe how we manage sector and provider risks to regulatory outcomes, and establishing a new Regulatory Operating Model which sets out our functions and scaffolds our broadened focus from assessing the performance of providers to other parts of the Regulatory Operating Model – most notably, using education as a key regulatory tool through which we support stakeholders to better understand risk and providers to meet their regulatory obligations. 
• Consulted widely to develop a shared understanding of ASQA’s purpose, which is to ensure quality VET so that students, employers, governments, and the community can have confidence in the integrity of national qualifications issued by training providers.