Expression of interest

An expression of interest registers you for a course without committing you to it. It is the step before enrolment, not enrolment itself, and nothing you submit here creates an obligation on either side.

What it does is start a process that a registered training organisation is required to run properly. That process — the pre-training review — is the most useful part of enrolling anywhere, and it is the one people most often treat as a formality. This page explains what happens after you submit, what the review is for, and the three things worth checking yourself first, because two of them decide eligibility outright.

The provider is RTO 3722, whose scope of registration holds 17 current qualifications, 81 current skill sets and 579 current units of competency, every one at the extent "deliver and assess". Our current registration period runs from 1 July 2025 to 30 June 2032 under ASQA.

Use the current application route

The source Expression of Interest page carries the application form and lists admissions@cht.edu.au for supporting-document questions. It mentions identity, academic and English-language evidence, with additional documents where required. We cannot decide the exact set from a general page; ask our admissions team which documents apply to your course and how to submit them securely before sending a passport or transcript. An expression of interest is still the start of a conversation, not a completed enrolment or funding decision.

Check these before you submit

1. Can you deliver in my state?

An RTO may only deliver and assess within its registered scope, and our delivery footprint is not uniform.

2. Are you on a student visa?

If so, only three courses are open to you, because only three are CRICOS-registered under provider code 04242E.

All three are registered at the Melbourne campus, with 300 registered places. Neither dedicated cookery qualification is CRICOS-registered — SIT30821 Commercial Cookery and SIT40521 Kitchen Management are not available on a student visa through us, which is worth establishing before you build a plan around them.

3. Do you have a USI?

For nationally recognised training, a Unique Student Identifier (USI) is generally required before a qualification or Statement of Attainment can be issued, unless an applicable exemption applies. See the official USI exemption guidance. A USI is free at usi.gov.au. If you already have one, recover it rather than creating another.

If you have studied in Australian nationally recognised training since 2015 you already have one. Recover it rather than creating a second. A duplicate splits your training history across two records, and that is exactly what makes a credit transfer application later look as though the earlier study never happened.

Two related rules worth knowing now rather than later: the RTO must ask the Registrar to verify the identifier belongs to you before using it for any purpose, and the USI itself must not be printed on your qualification or Statement of Attainment.

4. How old will you be when the course starts?

Our published enrolment conditions set a minimum age of 16 at course commencement, with additional documentation for learners under 17. These are the provider's own conditions rather than training package rules, and they need arranging before enrolment rather than during it.

An exemption from school attendance requires full-time training — at least 25 hours per week, excluding travel, term and public holidays — or training combined with employment, and it must identify the provider and the training. The provider must sight and retain it. Confirm the current conditions with us, since the age and documentation position is our own and can change.

What happens after you submit

The pre-training review is the important step

It is a requirement on the RTO under Standard 2.2 of the 2025 Outcome Standards for RTOs, pre-enrolment suitability advice. It is not a sales call, and its purpose is to establish whether you are appropriately placed in the training product — which sometimes means telling you that a different qualification, or no qualification, is the right answer.

That instrument is the National Vocational Education and Training Regulator (Outcome Standards for NVR Registered Training Organisations) Instrument 2025. It commenced on 1 July 2025 with no transition period and is arranged as four Quality Areas containing 23 Outcome Standards, supported by a Credential Policy and a set of Compliance Requirements. Almost everything on this page is one of those 23 standards rather than a provider's preference, which is why it is worth citing them by number.

Be careful with the number when you look it up: two different instruments have a "Standard 2.2". Outcome Standard 2.2 is the pre-enrolment suitability review and applies to every learner. National Code 2018 Standard 2.2 is a different obligation about assessing an overseas student's English, qualifications or work experience for course entry, and applies only to student visa holders.

The Outcome Standards review must consider:

• Language, literacy and numeracy
• Digital literacy
• Your individual requirements, including physical skills, prior experience, and any prerequisites or entry requirements

And for our own process it also:

• Confirms you are enrolling in the most suitable qualification
• Identifies current competencies relevant to the course
• Identifies opportunities for recognition of prior learning and credit transfer
• Shapes the learning and assessment strategy, and identifies the support services you will need

The LLN assessment described below sits inside this review, which is part of why the review is the right place to raise everything else too. The RTO must also be able to produce evidence of each pre-training review on request. If yours consisted of a two-minute phone call that did not touch prior experience, the review did not do its job.

Neither Certificate III in Hospitality has any entry requirement, so for most people the review is about suitability and credit, not admission.

Raise credit and prior learning here, not later

This is the single most valuable thing to take from this page. Our own student material states that RPL applications may only be made before enrolment or the start of study. Raising it afterwards is not simply harder — on our published process it is too late.

See ASQA’s credit-transfer guidance. | Skills from work or life, without paperwork | RPL | Standard 1.6 | A genuine assessment against the same evidence requirements as the course. Not a waiver. |

Using the right word matters. If you already hold the unit and ask for RPL, you are volunteering for an assessment you did not need. If you have twelve years behind a bar and ask for credit transfer, there is nothing on your transcript to transfer.

Two boundaries on credit transfer, neither of them discretionary: it works on whole units only, and it can be blocked by a licensing or regulatory requirement — but not by the provider's preference. Where it is granted, Standard 1.7 requires it to be recorded on your AQF certification documentation or your authenticated VET transcript.

Evidence that supports an RPL application, per our own material: a detailed resume, letters from employers, an interview with the assessor, demonstrable work skills or knowledge, and paid or unpaid work. For an international student, a successful RPL application that shortens the course may mean CHT amends and reissues the Confirmation of Enrolment.

RPL scales with the size of the qualification. Kitchen Management is 33 units with 27 of them core; Commercial Cookery is 25 units with 20 core. An experienced chef may already hold a substantial number of those competencies in practice. See skills assessment.

The LLN assessment, and the ACSF Level 3 expectation

You will complete a language, literacy and numeracy (LLN) assessment as part of the application and enrolment process, inside the pre-training review.

Our own course information states that learners are expected to have learning, reading, writing, oral communication and numeracy skills at Australian Core Skills Framework (ACSF) Level 3, which is equivalent to senior secondary school level. That expectation applies across multiple qualifications we offer, including the Certificate III and Certificate IV programs in hospitality, business, and leadership and management.

The assessment determines your ACSF level and does three things:

1. Identifies your current skill level against the framework, and whether you have the minimum skills to participate successfully
2. Identifies whether you will need LLN support to undertake the course
3. Informs the training and assessment strategy CHT designs for you

It is not a screening test for its own sake. Where support is needed the RTO is then required to provide it: Standard 2.3 covers access to support and timely responses to queries, Standard 2.4 covers reasonable adjustments to the method of assessment, consistently with the Disability Standards for Education 2005, and Standard 2.6 requires wellbeing needs to be identified by reference to what the course actually teaches. What an adjustment cannot do is change the competency standard itself; the unit's requirements are the same for everyone, and that is what keeps the qualification meaningful to an employer. If an adjustment is not appropriate or not possible you must be told the reasons. Our material says that anyone wanting help with language, literacy or numeracy can speak confidentially with their trainer, and that assessment methods can be discussed and varied to help a participant demonstrate competence.

The channel to disclose a disability must be open at enrolment and throughout, not only on the application form, so it is never too late in a course to ask.

What you are entitled to be told before you pay anything

Before you enrol, or before fees become payable, an RTO must give you:

• A full and accurate schedule of fees, including any prepaid fees
• The training product code and title
• The duration, the modes of delivery, the location, and the dates and scheduling
• Whether licensing or occupational licence requirements apply to the outcome
• Any third-party arrangements for delivery or assessment
• The training support and wellbeing support services available
• Every obligation to acquire materials or equipment, undertake a work placement, or travel and pay for accommodation to attend one
• Any cost of obtaining a USI or of withdrawing
• How to lodge an enquiry, and how long to expect to wait

Ask for the total cost in writing, with tuition and every other applicable fee identified. For a Skills First place, the 2026 rules require a clear refund policy before enrolment and, before training starts, written documentation showing that the program is subsidised and the total cost to you, including tuition after the government contribution and any concession or waiver, plus any other applicable fees for services, amenities, goods or materials. No price appears on this page, because a published fee ages badly and a stale figure is worse than none — confirm the current fee directly.

The RTO must also tell you as soon as practicable about changes affecting you, including where a training product you are enrolled in is superseded, deleted or expires. That is worth knowing because codes do turn over: once a product is superseded, new enrolments stop within a year of the replacement being listed, and existing students are transitioned in a timely manner.

If a work placement applies, note that a placement agreement must be completed before the placement commences, covering supervision, workplace conduct and the learning outcomes. There are three routes: a placement CHT arranges, one you arrange yourself, or a workplace arrangement where you are already in paid hospitality employment.

And two things worth knowing before you commit, because they are your recourse if something goes wrong. Under Standard 2.7 an RTO must run a publicly available, procedurally fair complaints system with published response timeframes — the old fixed 60-calendar-day rule was repealed in 2025, so ask what timeframe this provider publishes. Under Standard 2.8 you must be told your right to appeal a decision, including an assessment decision, and all avenues for independent review, which must be available at no or low cost. See policies.

If you are asking about subsidised training

We hold a Victorian VET Funding Contract as TOID 3722. New South Wales delivery is fee-for-service.

Three structural conditions come before anything else, and each is capable of deciding the question on its own:

• Citizenship or residence. Victorian Skills First requires you to be an Australian citizen, the holder of a permanent visa, or a New Zealand citizen.
• Commencement window. You must enrol and commence within the contracted period, which currently runs to 31 December 2026 inclusive.
• Physical presence. All training and assessment must be undertaken while you are physically present in Victoria, or in a listed border-region postcode. The one exception is a student temporarily interstate or overseas for a practical placement, who may be trained online for no more than 50% of total scheduled hours. There is no general online or interstate concession for funded students, and moving interstate part-way through is a compliance event rather than an administrative one.

Then four points that decide most of the remaining funding questions, and one that surprises people:

1. Eligibility to enrol is not eligibility for a subsidy. You may enrol fee-for-service without being subsidy-eligible.
2. Subsidised is not free. A student contribution generally applies. Providers must offer a concession rate, capped at no more than 20% of the standard tuition fee — a mandatory reduction, not a discretionary discount. Full fee waivers must be offered to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and to several other specified groups.
3. There are volume limits. At most two subsidised programs at the same time, two AQF qualifications per calendar year, and two skill sets per calendar year. They count commencements, not completions, and programs scheduled to start later in the same year count at enrolment. Because many short licensing courses are skill sets, stacking them hits the two-skill-set limit quickly.
4. If you are 20 or over at the reference date, Victorian Skills First generally requires that you do not already hold a qualification higher than Certificate I — which disqualifies most people who already hold a Certificate III or above.
5. A student enrolled in any school — government, non-government, independent or Catholic — is not eligible for a Skills First subsidy unless they are a school-based apprentice or trainee. They are not barred from enrolling, only from being subsidised.

The provider determines eligibility and holds the evidence for it, and bears the evidentiary burden if it is questioned. Use the Victorian Government's own online eligibility indicator as the authority rather than any provider's summary, including this one. See resources.

What to include in your expression of interest

• The course or qualification you are interested in, with its national code if you know it
• Your state or territory
• Whether you are a domestic student or on a student visa
• Any existing qualifications, units or industry experience, and your USI
• What you want the training for — a licensing requirement, a specific job, or a career change

That last one matters more than it sounds. "I need RSA for a bar job in Sydney" and "I want a hospitality qualification" lead to completely different answers, and only one of them is a qualification enquiry at all.

If a deadline is driving your timing

Some requirements have statutory clocks attached, and they run from when you start work, not from when you enrol.

Say so in your enquiry if a date is driving it. See RSA in Australia for the full eight-jurisdiction position and food handling for the food safety side.

One timing fact at the other end of the course, since it is the one people plan around: once you have been assessed, certification must issue within 30 calendar days of the completion of the assessment, provided you completed the training product and paid all agreed fees.

For international students

A written agreement must be entered into concurrently with, or before, we accept any payment. It must set out all tuition fees and the periods they relate to, the payment options, whether you may pay more than 50% of tuition before the course commences, and all non-tuition fees — reassessment, deferral, late payment and any others. It must state the refund terms in plain English, including what happens if the course is not delivered and the role of the Tuition Protection Service, and it must carry the Australian Consumer Law statement.

You must also be told, before the course commences, what satisfactory course progress requires and, where applicable, what attendance requires. Before you can be reported for unsatisfactory progress or attendance you must receive written notice as soon as practicable, with reasons, and be advised of your right to appeal within 20 working days. Note that the separate National Code 2018 Standard 2.2 obligation — assessing your English, qualifications or work experience for course entry — applies to you in addition to the Outcome Standards pre-training review. See policies, and the visa checklist and setting up a bank account in Australia for the practical side.

About us

Complete Hospitality Training (Vic) Pty Ltd, RTO 3722, CRICOS provider code 04242E, ABN 27 006 947 262. Level 3, 28 Elizabeth Street, Melbourne VIC 3000, and 410 Elizabeth Street, Surry Hills NSW 2010. Contact melbourne@cht.edu.au or +61 3 9654 1554.

See all courses, the student toolkit, policies, contact or the sitemap.

We link to the relevant course and regulatory sources in this guide. Check those sources for current requirements, and confirm course availability, delivery, fees and entry requirements with us before enrolling.