Independent Assesment Validation Services

At Independent Assessment Validation Services (IAVS) our goal is to support your RTO to provide quality training and assessment in VET consistent with the requirements of Standards for RTOs 2025.  We support RTOs to deliver nationally consistent, high-quality training that leads to quality outcomes for students, industry, employers and the Australian community.  We offer support to your RTO compliance operations to plan and conduct internal audits against the SRTO 2025, conduct assessment validation including validating assessment practices and judgements, review assessment tools, design training and assessment to ensure student wellbeing and success, and design and conduct research and evaluation.  

Assessment validation is the process of reviewing the RTO assessment system to ensure that the assessment tools and practices enable accurate and consistent judgements to be made. Regularly validating assessment practices and judgements and the RTO’s assessment system is critical to ensure students have been accurately assessed against the skills and knowledge required by the training product. Regular assessment validation also helps the RTO to identify where improvements to the assessment system can be made. 

While the Standards for RTOs 2025 require RTOs to undertake validation of each training product at least once every 5 years, this should be viewed as the base minimum, and we recommend more regular validation to ensure RTO quality and improve assessment practices and judgements. Validation frequency and sequencing should be informed by a RTO risk management approaches in consideration of changes to training products and feedback from students, employers and industry.

Given the important role validation has in assuring the quality of an RTO’s assessment system, it is critical the RTO choses the right people to conduct assessment validation. Standard 1.5 from the standards for RTOs specifies the credentials required to undertake assessment validation and independent validation.

Ruth Walker from Independent Assessment Validation Services (IAVS) is a highly qualified and experienced VET practitioner, who has nearly three decades of working in VET. She demonstrates expert assessment validation practices including independent assessment validation for TAE training products, including TAE40122 Certificate IV in Training and Assessment. Ruth is an experienced auditor and can provide clear and actionable advice to your RTO when responding to the outcomes of assessment validation.

At Independent Assessment Validation Services, we work to support RTOs to provide quality VET training and assessment and meet the SRTO 2025 by conducting internal audits of RTO operations. Whether the RTO undertakes a full audit or an audit of specific areas or standards, IAVS will identify risks to compliance and recommend practical, actionable solutions in consolation with the RTO to produce a comprehensive written report of their findings.

IAVS can design assessment tools that are consistent with the requirements of the training product, or we can conduct assessment tool review of your assessment tools in line with Standard 1.39(b) of the STRO 2025.  High quality assessment tools ensure assessment can be conducted in a way that is consistent with the principles of assessment and the rule of evidence, and they also need to be practical and easy to administer.