RPL - Policy to Practice
THINKPIECE | Cliff Trood and Janet Hewson, Chief Education Officers, TAFE NSW ICVET
The importance of RPL for adult participation in learning is critical. Why then is the take-up in Australia so low?
This paper is a discussion starter for the 2007 RPL Colloquium. However it poses questions that all practitioners may want to think about.
RPL then
In 2003 the OECD released a report titled ‘Beyond Rhetoric: Adult Learning Policies and Practices’1. The report noted the importance of human capital for economic growth as economies become increasingly knowledge based. Within this context the report outlined concerns about high unemployment rates among the unskilled and the necessity to increase learning opportunities for adults. From this context the report positioned Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) as a key concept in increasing adult participation in learning. 
The Australian experience predates the OECD report by more than a decade. In 1992 the National Training Board issued the National competency standards: policy and guidelines. These guidelines furthered the Federal Education and Training Minister Hon John Dawkins’ training reform agenda initiated in 1987.
These reform processes emphasised the importance of RPL as a component of Competency Based Assessment (CBA) and in 1993 the Federal and State Ministers of Education declared the National Framework for the Recognition of Training (NFROT), committing educational institutions, at all levels, to provide recognition for the existing skills and knowledge of students regardless of how, when or where they were acquired. 
RPL now
The current reform agenda continues to reinforce these principles of RPL and the responsiveness of the training system to meet the needs of industry and economic growth. The Council of Australian Governments (COAG) has agreed to fund RTO’s to establish or improve recognition processes so that workers do not have to repeat or undertake training for skills they have already acquired on the job. Further, the Australian Quality Training Framework in its standards for Registered Training Organisations (RTO) requires that an essential element of quality training and assessment as provided by the RTO is that assessment, including RPL, meet the requirements of endorsed training packages and accredited courses and are in consultation with industry.
Despite more than a decade of policy initiatives and encouragement to embrace RPL there has been an apparent reluctance, born out in statistics, to take up RPL. The NCVER2 reported that ‘The proportion of total annual hours associated with RPL rose from 1.5% in 1995 to 2.7% in 2001’. From 2000 to 2005 the NCVER reported an increase of only 5.7%.3 While there is some debate as to the accuracy of VET institutions recording and reporting of RPL, and with that the suggestion that there is a greater engagement in RPL out there, a clear imperative is to increase the use of RPL. In TAFE NSW structural changes, such as increasing the potential recognition component of a course to 100% has encouraged more engagement in RPL practice, but RPL, as an integral component in course delivery, appears to continue to challenge the status quo.
RPL policy to practice
So, what impedes the diffusion of RPL policy into contexts of practice? Perhaps we can begin by dividing the issues into structural and practitioner issues as it is clear in any discussion about RPL that there are organisational and individual dimensions. In this discussion we will define structural issues as being about organisational matters and may include such things as ‘time to carry out the process’, ‘policies and processes’, ‘documentation requirements’, ‘return on time invested’ and ‘financial barriers’.
While structural issues are important in supporting any change in practice these barriers can be used to hide other, perhaps even more important dimensions about practice. A key question here is, if all the current structural barriers were addressed would we see a rapid and broad take up of RPL practice embedded into delivery in line with policy or, would further structural issues come to the fore hiding deeper issues.
Practitioners work with the RPL candidate to carry out the assessment, that is, to make professional judgements, to engage an applicant in a way that quickly identifies suitable evidence, assesses that evidence against relevant criteria and supports the applicant through the process.
Bateman and Knight4 argue that for practitioners there needs to be a greater focus ‘on the collection and interpretation of evidence, on the judgement made and the quality assurance strategies used in the assessment system, not the context per se.’
This suggests that, at the practitioner level, there is a need to raise awareness and understanding of how to carry out assessment for the purposes of RPL, in particular evidence based assessment. It is the ability to identify and document this evidence that is at the heart of evidence based assessment.
One commentator considers that many teachers still do not understand evidence based assessment, and in particular, the structure of a unit of competency. This suggests that many teachers fail to use and critically interpret the complete documentation for a unit. Consequently, the competency unit ‘assessment guide’ which assists a teacher to identify the required knowledge and skills is often ignored and the groundwork that will assist them to identify valid and reliable evidence is not done.
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One of many documents to assist VET practitioners in getting to grips with RPL is the Department of Education Science and Training’s (DEST) document “Recognition of Prior Learning - your first step’ this document tells us that ‘RPL is one form of assessment. It involves collecting evidence and making judgements on whether competence has been achieved. Like other methods of assessment, RPL must be flexible, reliable, sufficient, fair and valid. RPL clients should be offered choice in how evidence is collected and presented. This does not make RPL assessment less rigorous than other assessment.’5
It is well understood that RPL is an assessment process and as such should be seen as aligned with other forms of evidence based assessment – it operates on the same principles, just has a different context.
Therefore, as part of a course assessment, recognition of what a candidate brings to the course that is relevant and part of what is to be learned should also be assessed. In this sense RPL has been embedded in VET provision since the introduction of Competency Based Training – or has it? If it is embedded why do teachers still struggle with the concept?
This suggests that evidence based assessment principles are not broadly embedded in practice and may explain the limited engagement of practitioners with RPL. Perhaps this is further impacted by the controversy surrounding the shift to a competency based education paradigm and as part of this the difficulty in defining competency and the impact this had on making clear assessment criteria. Has this experience placed competency based assessment in the difficult to ‘too hard’ basket?
Despite the controversy and after many years of debate, training packages now provide much more explicit documentation for each unit of competence and research shows that there is good competency based training being carried out by VET teachers. In view of this, if practitioners are embedding competency based principles into their practice and yet still resist RPL, does it argue that assessment for RPL is more different and difficult than thought and so less practiced?
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In discussions with VET practitioners about RPL as an assessment process a range of terms continually arise. These terms include professional judgement, assessment validation, trust, confidence, evidence (sufficient and valid) and time. How are these terms linked and why are trust and confidence included in discussions about RPL?
Perhaps a starting point is to define the role an assessor has in evidence based assessment and question what is clear and straight forward, what is not and why.
The 2007 ICVET Colloquium theme is RPL – more possibilities – better results and seeks to explore, with practitioners, answers to these and other questions about RPL.
Institutes will be selecting participants over the next few weeks so contact your PD Manager for more information.
After the Colloquium, continued exploration, discussion and debate by practitioners will be facilitated through online forums. These will be open for participation by all TAFE NSW teachers.
Watch this site and for developments.
References
1OECD, 2003, Beyond Rhetoric: Adult Learning Policies and Practices – Highlights
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/18/57/18466358.pdf
2 Bateman, A, Knight, B., 2003, Giving Credit, NCVER, Leabrook
3 NCVER, Australian Vocational Education and Training statistics: Students in courses 2005, 7 July 2006
4Ibid p.39
5Recognition of Prior Learning – your first step http://www.resourcegenerator.gov.au/ANTAFiles/PDF/{CA6A6CC0-A1EA-418F-B6BA-815B33CC60AD}.pdf (accessed 24/04/07)