How it works

Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) is a formal assessment pathway. If you can show you already do the work a qualification describes, an assessor can recognise that instead of making you sit through training for skills you have. It is not a shortcut and it is not a loophole — it is a normal part of the national training system.

What is hard about RPL is not the skill. It is the paperwork: knowing which units apply, what counts as evidence for each one, and assembling it into something an assessor can actually mark. That is the part we help with.

The four steps

1. Work out which qualification

Tell us what you do and how long you have done it, in your own words. We match that against the qualifications we can guide you through and show you what each one involves. If nothing fits, we say so — we do not sell a pathway we cannot take you through.

2. Pay when you are ready to submit

Building costs nothing. When you want to finish and send it, one payment covers a term of access for one qualification — from $349 for six months, depending on how many units the qualification has, with shorter and longer terms (including a monthly one that renews until you cancel) offered at checkout. The price is on each trade's own page before you start anything. Your RTO charges its own assessment fee separately; that is between you and them.

3. Talk it through, unit by unit — and watch it add up

Your guide works through the units one at a time and asks about the jobs you have actually done. You can talk instead of typing. Add photos of your work as you find them. Stop whenever you like — it saves where you are, and picks up next time. Most people spread this over weeks while they dig out old job records.

The conversation is only half of it. Beside it — as a column on a computer, along the bottom on a phone — your dashboard shows the portfolio itself as it fills in: percentage complete, every unit and the criteria under it, each piece of evidence that has been accepted, what is still outstanding, and who you have shared it with. It is on screen the whole time, and every number in it comes from your stored portfolio rather than from anything the guide says. If the two ever disagreed, the dashboard is the one to believe.

4. Get your portfolio

You end up with an evidence portfolio: your work history, your evidence mapped against each unit's requirements, referee forms for people who can vouch for you, and a summary of what is covered. You give that to your RTO.

What we do not do

• We do not assess you. Only a Registered Training Organisation can assess RPL and issue a qualification. Their assessor makes every competency decision.
• We do not guarantee an outcome. Anyone who does is not being straight with you. A strong portfolio makes a fair assessment possible; it cannot make the decision.
• We do not write your evidence for you. The guide records what you say and links every claim to something you said or uploaded. Portfolios that read like someone else wrote them are exactly what assessors reject.
• We do not tell you training is unnecessary. Sometimes there are genuine gaps. The assessor decides what those are.

What you will need

Evidence of your own work. In practice that means photos of jobs you finished, records like job sheets, dockets or payslips, any licences or tickets you hold, and supervisors or clients willing to confirm what you did. If you cannot produce any of that, RPL is probably not the right route yet, and you should not pay for it.