Risk management options
The question is "How can an RTO provide an accredited course in a high risk overseas location, while being fully auditable at the RTO's home office?"
Option 1: Registering the program as an ausiced overseas RTO location. This introduces another level of complexity, paricularly external auditing.
Option 2: On-line with local support. The Australian operation controls processes and assessment from its Australian base. This doesn't necessarily resolve all risks, especially those relating to dishonesty and inter-institutional misunderstandings.
Option 3: Transfer credit agreement. I’d prefer a separate college that produces acceptable credit for our qualifications, perhaps with its own local accreditation. I wouldn’t want to have to run it myself because it’d be very difficult to impose foreign control. I’d have a binding agreement where:
• They buy our materials, manage their internal affairs, and do all their own teaching. • We automatically recognize their transfer credit on the basis of periodic audits and some kind of validation of assessment (e.g. co-assessment). That is, we retain enough access to their internal processes to be sure of the validity of the credit we accept.Option 4: distance RPL. They could assemble and verify RPL portfolios using a good set of tools designed by us in collaboration with them, so all assessment is done on our premises here. We’d have relatively little control over any other processes.