What are the Skills SA Student Support Standards?
Skills SA is committed to the wellbeing of all VET students undertaking subsidised training in South Australia. As a training provider delivering subsidised VET training, you play an important role in this space. It’s important you have support systems in place that students know about and can access whenever they need them.
There are six Skills SA student support standards you need to meet. Each standard is explained in more detail below.
Student Support Standards
Standard 1: Upfront assessment of need (UAN)
You understand and demonstrate compliance with the UAN.
The UAN involves assessing a prospective student’s suitability for a course, any support needs they may have, and their literacy and numeracy skills, before you enrol them. It helps you look at every student as an individual so that you can offer them the support they need, when they need it, including any foundation skills training they might require. It’s mandatory to conduct the UAN for all students undertaking subsidised training in South Australia.
Standard 2: Understanding and supporting South Australian students
You have a strong and up-to-date understanding of your South Australian student group/s. You offer flexible training and assessment that works for all your students and reduces the need for individual adjustments.
It’s important that you understand the demographics of your South Australian students and can identify any systemic barriers or support needs they have. By doing so you can develop flexible approaches to training delivery, scheduling, and assessment that reduce the need to make individual adjustments.
Standard 3: Developing and delivering individual supports
You recognise and address the individual support needs of students. You ensure staff are aware of, and can refer students to, external support services.
Even with flexible approaches in place that can accommodate a wide range of student needs, there’ll be times when a student needs individual support. Along with any in-house support you provide, it’s important you work closely with your SWS provider.
Standard 4: Disability access
You make sure support is available for students with disability. You have processes in place whether or not you currently have students with disability.
You must have a process to identify disability and implement appropriate supports. You also need to understand your responsibilities under the Disability Standards for Education.
Standard 5: Professional development
You regularly complete professional development to address the specific support needs of students in South Australia.
Your staff need to complete professional development (PD) every year to help you address the specific barriers and support needs of your South Australian students.
Learner mental health and neurodiversity are increasing challenges facing training providers today. This has been highlighted by feedback from training providers, SWS providers, students, and across Governments at the state and national levels.
To help meet these challenges, by February 2026 you’ll need to make sure you meet mandatory PD requirements in:
- Mental Health First Aid (MHFA)
- Universal Design for Learning
- supporting students with dyslexia
Click on the professional development requirements link below for more information on the mandatory PD requirements.
Standard 6: Procedures
You have procedures that demonstrate compliance with each support standard.
It’s important you have documented policies, procedures, and/or work instructions in place, so new and existing staff understand what they need to do. It’s also important you monitor these documents regularly, update them when needed, and promote the processes they describe to students, where it’s relevant to do so.
What is the Organisational Self-Assessment form?
The Organisational self-assessment form is a template that allows you to demonstrate how you meet the six Skills SA student support standards. Each student support standard has its own section in the form, and each section is made up of one or more questions that you’ll need to respond to.
Skills SA has updated the self-assessment form based on extensive stakeholder feedback, to make it easier to understand and to use. The new form provides more resources and better guidance to help you respond to each question.
You can download the self-assessment form from the link below.
What is the Self-Assessment process?
The self-assessment process takes place every 12 months and allows you to meet two key obligations in your Funded Activities Agreement (FAA):
- Demonstrating compliance with the UAN
- Entering into a Success and Wellbeing Services (SWS) Partnership Agreement
If you’re a new training provider who’s recently signed an FAA, you must show you are compliant with the UAN and have an active SWS Partnership Agreement in place before you open training accounts. If you’re an existing training provider, you must maintain UAN compliance and renegotiate your SWS Partnership Agreement/s each year, to make sure there’s no break in SWS coverage.
The steps in the self-assessment process are described in more detail below.
The steps in the process are:
Step 1 – Download the self-assessment form
Skills SA will send you a reminder email two months before your self-assessment approval period expires. The email will include the date you need to submit your self-assessment by, along with any other instructions on what you’ll need to do or information you’ll need to provide in addition to your completed self-assessment form.
Always download the self-assessment form from the Skills SA website to ensure you have the latest version.
RTOs whose self-assessment is due soon and who have already begun the process of filling it out may wish to use the current self-assessment template and the associated Guide to Completing the Organisational Self-Assessment. These forms will remain available for use until 31 March 2025.
Step 2 – Fill in the form
When filling in the form, we’re looking for you to succinctly describe the processes and actions you take. Where possible, include recent examples from your South Australian student group/s to show how you’ve put these processes and actions into place.
We aren’t looking for you to cut and paste from your policies or processes, or from Skills SA guidelines. We don’t need you to submit policies, procedures, or other documents unless we ask for them.
Anyone within your organisation can fill in the self-assessment form. However, before you email the form to Skills SA, it needs to be approved by your contract representative or accountable officer as listed in your Funded Activities Annexure – STL Delivery.
Step 3 – Email the form to Skills SA for approval
Email the form to purchaseplanningandstrategy@sa.gov.au
Don’t convert your completed form to PDF before sending it.
A Skills SA assessor will be assigned to review your submission and will email you directly with their review outcome, typically within 10 working days.
The Skills SA assessor may provisionally approve your submission, or they may ask you to resubmit.
Where your self-assessment has thoroughly met the student support standards, we may choose to approve your compliance period for longer than the typical 12 months. This means you won’t have to submit another self-assessment until the date we specify. However, you will need to ensure you maintain your SWS Partnership Agreement/s each year, to ensure there’s no break in SWS coverage.
Step 4 – Resubmit the form (if required)
Where the Skills SA assessor asks you to resubmit, follow the instructions and timeframes they give you in their email.
The assessor may also ask you to provide copies of policies or procedures, such as your UAN procedure – don’t submit these until the assessor requests them.
You may be asked to resubmit more than once.
Step 5 – Negotiate an SWS Partnership Agreement
Once Skills SA has provisionally approved your self-assessment, it’s up to you to liaise with and negotiate an SWS Partnership Agreement with your nominated SWS provider/s.
You can enter into agreements with as many SWS providers as you wish, but each one requires you to sign a separate Partnership Agreement.
Step 6 – Email your signed SWS Partnership Agreement to Skills SA
Once both you and your SWS provider have signed the SWS Partnership Agreement, email a PDF copy to Skills SA at purchaseplanningandstrategy@sa.gov.au
You’ll receive an email in response confirming your provisional approval has been finalised, which completes the self-assessment process.
We’ll help you along the way
If you have any questions about the Self-Assessment process, you can contact us via email at purchaseplanningandstrategy@sa.gov.au