Set Up Your Validation Program
Validation quality assures your assessment system. Standard 1.5 of the Standards for RTOs 2025 requires every training product on your scope of registration to be validated at least once every five years, and more often where you become aware of risks to training outcomes, changes to the training product or relevant feedback. It also requires a risk-based approach to deciding which parts of the assessment system are validated and the sample size.
This guide walks you through setting up your validation program in RTOSafe.
Why This Matters
Auditors don’t just want to see that you’ve done validations — they want to see a systematic, risk-based approach to deciding what gets validated, when, and why. A well-structured validation program demonstrates that your RTO:
- Has a defensible rationale for how you sample and schedule validations
- Prioritises higher-risk areas rather than validating randomly
- Maintains a rolling schedule that covers your entire scope over time
Overview
| Step | What you’ll do |
|---|---|
| 1 | Set up delivery — define which units or modules you deliver |
| 2 | Create validation strategies — choose which units to sample and document your rationale |
| 3 | Complete your validation program — set risk levels and next validation years for units in the program |
Your scope is synced from training.gov.au automatically, so qualifications, skill sets and units are already on your Scope page.
If your scope only contains individual units (no qualifications, skill sets or accredited courses), skip to step 3.
1 — Set Up Delivery
For each qualification, skill set or accredited course, tell RTOSafe which units or modules you deliver. Go to Scope, open the Needs Setup tab and work through each item. Core units are added for you; add the electives you deliver. See Set Up the Units You Deliver.
If a skill set came down from training.gov.au but you don’t deliver it, mark it as not delivered so it stays out of your validation program.
2 — Create Validation Strategies
Most RTOs sample rather than validate every unit every year. Either way, you need a defensible approach. For each qualification, skill set and accredited course, choose the units you’ll sample and record your rationale. Finish its delivery setup first. See Create a Validation Strategy.
3 — Complete Your Validation Program
Each unit needs a risk level and a next validation year to appear in your program. You don’t have to set these one unit at a time: open Validation Program, and if anything is missing it takes you to a report where you can fill them in for every unit at once. It also lists anything still needing a validation strategy.
For guidance on choosing risk levels, see Set Risk Levels for Units.
You’re Done
Your Validation Program now shows a 5-year schedule of what’s due and when. Book your validation sessions as they come due, then record each validation. The schedule updates as you go, and you can adjust validation frequency settings to match your organisation’s capacity.
To move one unit’s next validation, open the unit from Scope, go to Validations and select Change Validation Schedule.
