Policies: what an RTO must have, and what you can ask for

A registered training organisation's policies are not internal paperwork. Several of them create rights you can exercise, and an RTO is required to have them, tell you about them, make the procedures available, and follow them.

Our published documents and fee schedules

The CHT source Policies page points students to the documents that apply to this provider. We have linked those practical documents here so you can read them alongside the general rights explained below:

These links were reachable on 23 October 2026; reachability does not certify that a PDF is the latest approved version for a particular student. Ask us for the version that applies to your enrolment, and keep the written fee statement and agreement we give you. The general legal duties below do not replace our own current policy documents.

Read this page in two halves

There are two different things here, and confusing them is how people end up relying on the wrong document.

Where a specific figure, fee or timeframe belongs to our own policy rather than to the law, this page says where it comes from and tells you to confirm it. No dollar amount appears anywhere on this page, because a published fee ages badly and a stale figure is worse than none.

The instrument, and why its name matters

The obligations below come from the National Vocational Education and Training Regulator (Outcome Standards for NVR Registered Training Organisations) Instrument 2025, usually shortened to the Outcome Standards for RTOs. It is arranged as four Quality Areas containing 23 Outcome Standards. Each standard states a required outcome, and each is followed by performance indicators the RTO must be able to demonstrate. It is accompanied by a Credential Policy, which specifies which credentials satisfy the workforce standards, and by a set of Compliance Requirements, which carry several duties that are not in the Standards themselves.

It commenced 1 July 2025 with no transition period, so it applies to our whole current registration term of 1 July 2025 to 30 June 2032.

Naming the instrument matters for one standard in particular. Standard 2.2 of the Outcome Standards for RTOs is the pre-enrolment suitability review described below. The National Code 2018 also has a Standard 2.2, and it is a different rule about a different cohort — assessing an overseas student's English, qualifications or work experience for course entry. A citation to "Standard 2.2" with no instrument named is ambiguous, and both readings appear in circulation.

Quality Area 1: training and assessment

Standards 1.6 and 1.7 matter to you directly, and they are different things. Under 1.6 the RTO must offer you the opportunity to seek recognition of prior learning, make you aware of the policy, base the decision on evidence of prior skills, learning and experience, document it, and make it fairly, transparently and consistently between students while maintaining the integrity of the training product. Under 1.7 the same obligations apply to credit transfer, but the evidence is prior completion of an equivalent training product, shown by your AQF certification documentation or an authenticated VET transcript. Credit transfer can be prevented by a licensing or regulatory requirement — not by the RTO's preference. See skills assessment and student toolkit.

Standard 1.4 is worth knowing because it is what stops assessment being arbitrary. The four principles of assessment are fairness (accommodates your needs, allows reasonable adjustment and reassessment where necessary), flexibility (assesses your skills regardless of how or where you acquired them), validity (includes practical application — you demonstrate in a practical setting) and reliability (evidence is interpreted consistently, so outcomes are comparable regardless of who assessed you).

The four rules of evidence are validity (the evidence gives reasonable assurance you hold the skills and knowledge in the product), sufficiency (enough, relevant, good enough quality to support a judgement), authenticity (it is your own work) and currency (it demonstrates current skills and knowledge).

Standard 1.3 is newer than people expect and easy to overlook. The assessment system must be fit for purpose, and assessment tools must be reviewed before they are used against the training product, the principles of assessment and the rules of evidence — not audited after the fact. Where a provider buys assessment tools in rather than writing them, they must be contextualised to the actual cohort and learning environment rather than applied generically. Standard 1.4 also requires that no assessment judgement is made by a person working under direction, and that the RTO verifies the person being assessed is the person who will receive the qualification.

Standard 1.5, validation, happens behind the scenes but underwrites the qualification's meaning: assessment tools and judgements are reviewed by credentialled people to confirm they assess what the unit requires. Every training product must be validated at least once every five years, on a documented risk-based approach that justifies which components are validated and what sample size is used. At least one validator must hold a recognised validation credential, and the validators must collectively hold relevant industry competencies. The earlier prescription — validate 50 per cent of products within three years — has been repealed in favour of that justified judgement.

Quality Area 2: VET student support

This is the quality area most relevant to a prospective student.

Standard 2.1 governs what you must be told before you commit. That includes a full and accurate schedule of fees including prepaid fees, the training product code and title, duration, modes of delivery, location, dates, whether licensing or occupational licence requirements apply, third-party arrangements, the support services available, every obligation to acquire materials or undertake a work placement, any cost of obtaining a USI or of withdrawing, and how to lodge an enquiry and how long to expect to wait. That last item is an entitlement people rarely use. All of it must be given to you before any fees are payable, and you must also be told as soon as practicable about changes affecting you, including the transition of a superseded, deleted or expired training product.

Standard 2.2, pre-enrolment suitability advice, is the basis of the pre-training review every learner completes before enrolling. It must consider your language, literacy and numeracy, your digital literacy, and your individual requirements including physical skills, prior experience and any prerequisites or entry requirements, and it must establish whether you are appropriately placed. The RTO must be able to produce evidence of each pre-training review. It is a requirement, not a sales step. See expression of interest.

Standard 2.3 requires access to support, regular review of any third-party support services, and that you know how to contact your trainers and assessors. It also requires channels to disclose a disability at enrolment and throughout, and an environment in which asking for an adjustment is comfortable.

Standard 2.4, reasonable adjustments. If a disability or other circumstance affects how you can demonstrate competence, the RTO must consider adjustments to the method of assessment, consistently with the Disability Standards for Education 2005, and must tell you the reasons if an adjustment is not appropriate or possible. What cannot change is the competency standard itself — the unit's requirements stay the same for everyone, and an adjustment must not jeopardise the integrity of the training product or the industry standard.

Standards 2.5 and 2.6 are new in the 2025 instrument. 2.5 requires a safe and inclusive environment that is culturally safe for First Nations people, and the regulator expects genuine engagement with local First Nations communities rather than a policy statement. 2.6 requires wellbeing needs to be identified by reference to the training product content — a provider teaching RSA and licensed-venue content has a different wellbeing profile from one teaching business administration — and it extends to third-party environments such as work placements.

Standards 2.7 and 2.8, complaints and appeals. A complaint concerns conduct; an appeal concerns a decision, most often an assessment outcome. If you are assessed as not yet competent and disagree, you are entitled to appeal.

Complaints and appeals in detail

What the complaints system must contain: procedural fairness, reasonable timeframes set by the RTO, escalation avenues, and publicly available procedures. What the appeals system must contain: that you are told your right to appeal and all avenues for independent review, procedural fairness, clear timeframes, and independent review at no or low cost.

One change in the 2025 instrument is worth knowing before you complain. The old fixed 60-calendar-day response rule is repealed. The RTO now sets its own reasonable timeframes and must publish them, and must be able to justify them. So the right question is no longer "is it within 60 days" but "what timeframe has this provider published, and is it being met".

The regulator names specific failure modes, which double as a checklist you can apply to any provider:

• Third parties not escalating complaints to the RTO
• Not capturing informal complaints — a verbal conversation with a trainer is still a complaint
• Not letting all parties respond
• Not acting on trends, or not addressing root cause

Our own published procedure. As set out in our student material, and consistent with the National Code 2018 mechanics that apply to our CRICOS delivery, our complaints and appeals process provides that a complaint may be made in any form and need not be formally documented to be acted on; that assessment commences within a stated number of working days of lodgement and is finalised as soon as practicable; that you may formally present your case at minimal or no cost and may be accompanied and assisted by a support person at any relevant meeting; that the matter is handled in confidence and a written record is kept; that you receive a written statement of the outcome including detailed reasons; that your enrolment is maintained while the process runs; that an outcome in your favour is implemented immediately; and that if you are not satisfied with the internal outcome you are advised of your right to access an external process at minimal or no cost, with the contact details of the appropriate body. Request the current Student Handbook for the exact timeframes — they are our own, and this page does not restate them.

If an internal complaint is not resolved, the Australian Skills Quality Authority accepts complaints about registered training organisations. Students on a student visa may also approach the Overseas Students Ombudsman. Privacy complaints run through the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, not ASQA. See contact for what to have ready.

Refunds

The shape of our published refund policy, from our own student material, is worth knowing before you enrol — the amounts are not reproduced here and must be confirmed with us directly:

Two things follow from that table. First, the withdrawal deadline sits before commencement, so if you are unsure about a course the decision point arrives earlier than most people expect. Second, if the course is cancelled or cannot commence the risk is the provider's, not yours. Ask for the current refund policy in writing and read the withdrawal clause before you pay.

For an international student the refund terms must additionally be set out in the written agreement, in plain English, including what happens if the course is not delivered and the role of the Tuition Protection Service.

Privacy and your personal information

The governing instruments are the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles, the Privacy and Data Protection Act 2014 (Vic), and the Student Identifiers Act 2014 (Cth).

What the law requires, and what our published privacy policy states:

• Collection is limited to personal data reasonably necessary for, or directly related to, your enrolment and training — including the standard enrolment questions, funding eligibility evidence where applicable, and assessment, RPL and LLN results
• Personal information is used only for the purpose it was collected and not disclosed for a secondary purpose except as permitted by law
• Client information is not disclosed to a third party without your consent, and our policy states we do not supply information to marketing companies, public relations companies or overseas companies
• Personal information is supplied to State and Commonwealth governments and their representatives for administration, monitoring, audit and statistical reporting, including AVETMISS reporting to NCVER, which is how your national training transcript is built. You are told this on the enrolment form and asked to acknowledge it
• Access is restricted to authorised personnel, supported by password-protected systems and lockable storage, and payment details are collected through secure platforms
• You can access your own file and the records held about you, by making a written application to the RTO; a time is then arranged for you to view them

The USI rules add specific duties. Under section 11 of the Student Identifiers Act 2014, identity documents obtained to create a USI must not be retained unless another law requires it — so a passport scan left in your file is a contravention. Section 16 requires reasonable steps to protect any USI record, and a contravention is an interference with privacy under the Privacy Act 1988. Section 12(1)(a) prohibits printing your USI on a qualification or Statement of Attainment. And because a USI is a government-related identifier, Australian Privacy Principle 9 prevents an organisation adopting it as its own identifier — it should not be your internal student number, on your lanyard, or in a URL.

An RTO must also have your permission before creating or finding a USI for you, and must give you a privacy notice if it creates one on your behalf. Before using a student identifier for any purpose, the RTO must ask the Registrar to verify that it belongs to you.

Access, equity and anti-discrimination

Our material identifies the framework we operate under as the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act (Vic), the Disability Act (Vic), the Equal Opportunity Act (Vic) and Victorian privacy legislation, alongside our access and equity commitments. Commonwealth anti-discrimination law applies as well, and Standard 2.4 points expressly to the Disability Standards for Education 2005. The practical effect is that access to training, and the way you are treated during it, must not turn on background, disability or other protected attributes — and that a reasonable adjustment under Standard 2.4 is an entitlement, not a favour.

Records

Records may be kept in hard copy or electronically, and a regulator may direct an RTO to retain them longer. The two-year assessment-evidence minimum interacts awkwardly with the five-year validation cycle, and the regulator has said so: an RTO that disposes of assessment evidence at the earliest permitted date may find it has nothing left to validate. A provider that keeps evidence longer than the minimum is not being disorganised.

For government-funded training the provider must also be able to produce evidence of eligibility, of any fee concession or waiver, statements of fees, evidence of participation, evidence of each pre-training review, and evidence that fees reported as charged were actually received — including invoices issued to the student and bank-generated transaction statements.

One provision is worth knowing because of how severe it is: under the Victorian funding contract, if a record is not made available on request it is deemed not to exist and the activity is deemed not to have occurred. Documentation is not a formality in this system.

Your certificate

An RTO must not issue AQF certification unless you have been assessed as meeting the training product requirements. Once you have, certification must issue within 30 calendar days of the completion of the assessment, provided you completed the training product and paid all agreed fees.

A qualification testamur must carry the issuing organisation's name, registration code and logo, the qualification code and title, the Nationally Recognised Training logo, an authorised signature, a seal or unique identifier, and a statement recognising the qualification within the AQF. A Statement of Attainment must carry the same provider identifiers plus the full title and national code of every unit. Your USI must not appear on either. See student toolkit.

One related prohibition is worth knowing if your training was arranged through an agent, a broker or an employer intermediary. Under the Compliance Requirements a third party may not use the NRT logo, use the RTO's branding, or issue AQF certification documentation. If a certificate arrives from anyone other than the registered training organisation, that is a defect in the document, not a variation in practice.

Quality Area 3: VET workforce

Standard 3.1 is new in 2025: the RTO must have an appropriate number of trainers, assessors and staff for the services it offers, and must facilitate access to continuing professional development for all of them.

Standard 3.2. To deliver training and assessment without direction, including making assessment judgements, a trainer must hold one of: TAE40122 Certificate IV in Training and Assessment or its successor, TAE40116, TAE40110, a diploma or higher in adult education or VET, or a secondary teaching qualification plus a specified VET-delivered-to-school-students enhancement skill set. Assessment-only roles add TAESS00001 to the acceptable list. A person with relevant credentials may deliver training and help collect evidence under direction, but may not make assessment judgements. The Standard requires delivery by credentialled people with current skills and knowledge; the Credential Policy accompanying the Standards is what specifies which credentials each role needs.

Standard 3.3 requires current industry skills — competencies, skills and knowledge relevant to, and at least to the level of, the training product, demonstrated current industry practice, and maintained engagement with industry, supported by continuing professional development. For hospitality this is meaningful: someone teaching espresso, commercial cookery or responsible service of alcohol is expected to have current industry currency, not only a teaching qualification. It is a fair question to ask about any practical course.

The same standard governs industry experts, who are a different category from trainers. An expert may be engaged only on a specific need basis, by reference to the training product or a particular cohort, must work only under the direction of a credentialled person, and where involved in assessment must conduct it alongside the trainer or assessor rather than instead of them. See trainers and assessors.

Quality Area 4: governance

The RTO and its governing persons must be fit and proper, staff must understand the regulatory instruments and be told when they change, third parties must be held to the same standards, and training delivered to people under 18 must be managed under the National Principles for Child Safe Organisations. "Governing person" is a single defined term introduced in 2025, reaching anyone responsible for overseeing, directing or exercising control or influence over the organisation.

Standard 4.3 also requires that conflicts of interest, including those of third parties, are identified, managed and disclosed, and that the governing persons understand the organisation's financial position, performance and cashflows. Standard 4.4 requires monitoring and improvement across the entire scope of operations rather than only the products being marketed — a real obligation for a provider holding 81 skill sets and promoting a fraction of them.

Standard 4.1 is the one that bears on marketing. All information given to students by the RTO or any third party must be clear, accurate and current. The risks the regulator names are specific and usefully concrete: false or misleading marketing of a course or qualification; marketing unrealistically short courses that compromise the integrity of the training product; promoting easier paths through inappropriately short duration or inadequate RPL; not remaining aware of all marketing material in circulation; using images that do not depict the facilities actually used; not clearly distinguishing Nationally Recognised Training from non-accredited training; and failing to comply with Australian Consumer Law. Marketing must also identify which services are delivered by third parties or experts. That distinction between nationally recognised and non-accredited training is the one to watch on any short-course advertisement — see how to tell a good course provider from a bad one.

Duties in the Compliance Requirements rather than the Standards

Several obligations sit in the Compliance Requirements that accompany the Standards. They are less visible than the 23 standards and they are the ones that most often catch a provider out.

What changed from the 2015 Standards

If you are comparing a provider's policy documents against something written before July 2025, these are the points where the old document will be wrong rather than merely dated.

Obligations that sit outside the Standards

For nationally recognised training, a 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; recover an existing one rather than creating another. Your USI must not be printed on the credential. We need your authorisation before creating a USI on your behalf. The Student Identifiers Registrar administers the USI system.

International students. The Education Services for Overseas Students Act 2000 and the National Code 2018 apply to CRICOS-registered courses, and sit on top of the Standards rather than instead of them. Among the duties: a written agreement entered into before or concurrently with accepting payment, listing all tuition and non-tuition fees, the refund terms and the Tuition Protection Service; information on or access to services covering your employment rights and conditions, and referrals at no additional cost if you ask; being told before the course commences what satisfactory course progress and attendance require; and, before being reported for unsatisfactory progress or attendance, written notice as soon as practicable, the reasons, and the right to appeal within 20 working days, with a report made only after the complaints processes are complete or declined.

AQF volume of learning. The qualification level carries its own expectation of duration, independent of delivery mode: Certificate II 0.5 to 1 year, Certificate III 1 to 2 years, Certificate IV 0.5 to 2 years, Diploma 1 to 2 years. The volume must be sufficient for a graduate to achieve the learning outcomes, and the regulator names "accelerating or shortening training without allowing students sufficient time for skill development" as a risk. A course advertised far below its band deserves a question.

Data reporting. RTOs report through AVETMISS to NCVER, which is how your national training transcript is built.

What you can reasonably ask for

Before enrolling anywhere:

• The complaints and appeals policy, including the provider's published response timeframes
• The refund policy, and an itemised statement of fees separating tuition, administration and amenities
• Whether RPL or credit transfer applies to you, and the RPL application form
• The pre-training review process, and a copy of your own completed review
• For a practical course, the trainer's credentials and industry currency
• Any work placement obligation and the placement agreement
• For an international student, the written agreement
• How to lodge an enquiry and how long to expect to wait

If a provider is reluctant to supply any of these, that is informative in itself.

Verifying the RTO itself

Our current registration period runs 1 July 2025 to 30 June 2032, exercised by ASQA under the National Vocational Education and Training Regulator Act 2011. Our 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", so we both train and assess across our whole scope. CRICOS registration covers three qualifications only — SIT40422, SIT50322 and SIT50422 — so most of the scope is not available on a student visa. See about us, our story and resources.

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.

For our own policy documents — the Student Handbook, refund policy, privacy policy and complaints and appeals procedure — contact us directly. Where this page summarises our own material it says so; the current document controls.

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.