Every RPL decision has to rest on evidence. The 2025 Standards for RTOs say so directly: decisions about recognition of prior learning must be based on evidence of a person's prior skills, learning and experience, and made through the organisation's own assessment system.
That sounds obvious. In practice, most of the time an assessor spends on an RPL application goes on working out what the evidence actually shows — and much of that work could be avoided if the same four questions were asked of every piece, as early as possible.
The questions come straight from the rules of evidence in Standard 1.4.
The four questions
1. Does it show what the unit asks for?
This is validity. The evidence has to give the assessor reasonable assurance that the person has the skills and knowledge the training product describes. Not skills in general, and not the skills of the job they held — the ones in the unit.
2. Is there enough of it, of the right kind?
This is sufficiency, and it is about quality and relevance as much as quantity. The test isn't whether the pile is big enough. It's whether the evidence, taken together, lets the assessor make an informed judgement about competency.
3. Is it genuinely theirs?
This is authenticity. The assessor needs to be assured that the evidence is the person's own, original work.
4. Does it show what they can do now?
This is currency. The evidence has to demonstrate the person's current skills and knowledge. The Standards don't set a number of years; what counts as current depends on the skill, the training product and the organisation's assessment system.
Where submissions fail
Most weak RPL submissions fail one of these questions in a predictable way.
Proof of the role, not of the doing
A position description, a job title or a list of responsibilities tells the assessor what someone was employed to do. It doesn't show that they did it, how well, or against which parts of the unit. It fails the first question, and usually the second.
Ask instead for evidence of the work itself: things they produced, decisions they made, situations they handled — each tied to the part of the unit it speaks to.
Volume over relevance
A large submission feels thorough. More often it means the candidate didn't know what was needed, sent everything, and left the assessor to sort it. Sufficiency is not the same as quantity: fifty documents with no clear link to the unit are harder to judge than five that map to it cleanly.
Ask candidates to say, for each piece, which part of the unit it shows. The ones they can't place usually shouldn't be there.
Old or unverifiable evidence
Work from years ago can be strong evidence that someone could do something. On its own it rarely shows they can do it now. And evidence with nothing tying it to the candidate — unsigned documents, material that could belong to anyone on a team — leaves the assessor unable to answer the third question at all.
Ask for recent examples alongside older ones, and for a way to verify: a supervisor who can confirm the work, a record that names them, a date.
Ask the questions early
The four questions work best before assessment starts, not during it. If candidates see them when they begin gathering evidence — in plain language, with examples — far less of what arrives needs to be sent back.
A submission that has already been tested against all four is quicker to assess, easier to defend, and fairer to the candidate, who finds out what's missing while they can still do something about it.
Atlas RPL keeps assessment records audit-ready and exportable, so the answer to each of these questions is on file when someone asks how a decision was made.
Sources
- National Vocational Education and Training Regulator (Outcome Standards for NVR Registered Training Organisations) Instrument 2025, in force from 1 July 2025. Schedule 1, Standard 1.4 (the rules of evidence: validity, sufficiency, authenticity and currency) and Standard 1.6 (recognition of prior learning); section 4 (definition of recognition of prior learning). Federal Register of Legislation, F2025L00354