TEQSA Conference – Partnerships Driving Quality

Posted: 13/12/2019

By Carly Boon

The Fourth Annual TEQSA Conference was an insightful, and exceptionally well-attended event with many of the delegates surprised at just how many attended. This is proof that there is growing nervousness around pending re-registrations against the new standards, as well as a high number of VET providers testing the waters in preparation for initial registration.

The theme for this year was Partnerships Driving Quality, and the conference focused on how providers can collaborate with industry, professional accreditation bodies and regulatory authorities to benefit students, the higher education sector and Australian education.

Several extensive blog articles have been published relating to the four major priorities that TEQSA presented through the conference; these include:

  • Academic Integrity and contract cheating
  • Sexual assault and harassment
  • English language competency in international students
  • Admissions transparency

If you would like the details of these blogs or an overview of one or more of these topics, please feel free to contact me.

As part of the Governance and Compliance team here at DVE (supporting Higher Education providers with their initial registration or subsequent re-registrations), I was interested to hear TEQSA repeatedly encourage providers to seek external input and advice.

In the past there has been concern with consultants providing ‘cookie cutter’ content for applications; however, this is clearly now replaced with accessing and utilising experienced and reputable consultants who can provide advice and direction to improve the quality of submissions.

Providers lack of clarity of standards requirements, combined with TEQSA’s increasing workload, has driven the onus to now be on providers to seek their own expert help to submit a quality body of evidence.

Our DVE model brings the experience of our team, including the sectors best subject matter experts (SMEs), with our proven methodology to providers in both course and provider registration areas. So it was encouraging to hear as it reinforces the approach we are taking, is not only achieving amazing results, but is also something to be modelled through the sector.

Where does it usually fall down?

TEQSA spoke specifically about governance being the first hurdle that registration or re-registration so often fall down on. This is something that we always focus on and aim to prevent. It should be caught and implemented with the help of an