Wouldn’t RPL be easy if…..

Wouldn’t RPL be easy if someone tapped you on the shoulder at the beginning of your career and said “hey keep a portfolio of things that you work on, it could help you out big time in the future”.

We can’t go back to the past and change that but it might be something you could implement now for future you.

Many of us (including our team here) have been in the position where we know our knowledge and abilities meet or even exceed what is required for some qualifications but we just don’t have that all important bit of paper. We’ve spoken to our friends or our colleagues about Recognition of Prior Learning and in most cases the conversation becomes “it’s easier to just do the course!!”.

Here are PARCOR, we are trying to change that. We’re coaching people on how to keep track of the right type of evidence for that recognition of their skills.

The first step is learning why some people may view RPL as the hard way.

In Vocational Education and Training, there are what we call Principals of Assessment and Rules of Evidence. It is in the application of the Rules of Evidence where at times, the RPL process can get difficult.

The Rules of Evidence are;

Validity
The assessor is assured that the learner has the skills, knowledge and attributes as described in the module or unit of competency and associated assessment requirements.

What this means is that judgement has to be made on the learners ability to apply the knowledge and skills required within the Unit of Competency or Qualifications to a range of scenarios.

Sufficiency
The assessor is assured that the quality, quantity and relevance of the assessment evidence enables a judgement to be made of a learner’s competency.

This is about having “enough” evidence, many Qualifications and Units of Competency require that the learner have been assessed over time in a variety of different contexts.

Authenticity
The assessor is assured that the evidence presented for assessment is the learner’s own work.

During the assessment of RPL the assessor is looking for what connects the learner to the piece of evidence. The learner may have presented a document that they developed on behalf of their company however the authorship may not be clearly obvious without further evidence to link the evidence to the learner.

Currency
The assessor is assured that the assessment evidence demonstrates current competency. This requires the assessment evidence to be from the present or the very recent past.

Unless a Qualification or Unit of Competency says otherwise (such as those with licenced outcomes) this is generally regarded as evidence that is no more than 2-5 years old

What does RPL look like?

Lets take a look at what an RPL for BSBADM502 – Manage meetings which is an elective unit of BSB51918 – Diploma of Leadership and Management

​Your assessor would use an RPL assessment tool that is ensuring meet the requirements of the unit found at https://training.gov.au/

The RPL Assessment Tool would be asking for you to provide evidence of organising meetings. This might be in the context of a your workplace, a sporting club, a community group or a community service that you volunteer with. The examples or evidence requested would include things such as;
  • A copy of your CV showing the role in which you were required to organise meetings.
  • An email or communication chain where you have been coordinating meeting attendees
  • An extract of your calendar or diary showing you as the meeting organiser
  • The agenda that you have set and circulated to meeting attendees
  • The minutes that were created throughout the meeting showing you as the meeting chairperson.
  • Any follow up from that meeting such as insertion of outstand items into the next meetings agenda.
  • A referee or reference that can confirm your role.
To ensure that the validity, sufficiency, authentic and currency you would ensure to Provide evidence from multiple recent meetings that clearly shows you as the meeting organiser / chairperson and have a referee or reference that can confirm the role you played.

Summary

If there is a qualification that you are looking to RPL, have a chat with us. Our assessors can assist you to break down the qualification and perhaps help you choose elective units that you most likely have evidence for. They may present options where rather than applying for RPL of the entire Qualification it may be best to RPL individual units and study the gaps or look at assessment only pathways. Who knows, you may even hold some of the individual Units of Competency from the qualification and a credit can be granted.