Steering committee
You need to form a steering committee. This committee provides advice and approval for course development before you submit it for accreditation.
The steering committee confirms the course:
- contains appropriate content
- achieves the required outcomes
- has a qualification structure that meets the needs of industry, enterprise or community
- meets occupational health and safety
- includes validated skills summaries.
Membership
Most steering committee members must be industry representatives, including the chairperson.
Industry representatives may include members from:
- Jobs and Skills Councils or industry advisory groups
- employer or professional associations
- key peak industry bodies
- stakeholder groups or individuals
- curriculum maintenance managers
- other RTOs or education providers (if appropriate).
The chairperson must be independent and not affiliated with the course owner.
The course owner can have a maximum of 2 members on the steering committee.
Membership must include an accreditation expert and writer. They must know about the standards for accredited courses.
Rules
There must be a record of members:
- contact details
- representation of an industry, community, union, professional organisation or other body
- current position and organisation.
All members of the steering committee must declare any conflict of interest in the development of the course. This must happen at the first meeting of the committee. Record all conflicts of interest in the minutes.
Everyone on the committee must sign the course contents endorsement form. Include the signed form with the course accreditation submission.
There are no set number of meetings, but a minimum of 2 is usually needed.
Include the minutes of steering committee meetings with your course accreditation application.
Develop a course
After the steering committee is established, you can start developing your course.
You need to document:
- course content
- expected skills and knowledge outcomes
- training and assessment structures.
You can use existing units of competency from endorsed training packages to cover the course content or create new ones.
The AQTF Users’ Guide to the Standards for Accredited Courses will help you with this process.
New units of competency
You can develop new units of competency, called enterprise units.
You should do this in close consultation with relevant technical experts and industry practitioners.
Consider consulting an accreditation adviser when designing enterprise units.
Foundation skills summary
You must have foundation skills in your course. If they are not clearly identified, you should complete this summary and include it in your application.
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