Approved providers must put in place the procedures set out in section 48 of the VET Student Loans Act 2016.
On this page:
Make sure your staff understand and are trained in the procedures they need to follow in their roles.
Your procedures must provide for equal and fair treatment of all students seeking to enrol in an approved course.
You must publish your procedures on your website in an easily accessible location that is not behind a login.
Your processes and procedures must specify that the provider must retain for at least 5 years the documents collected for the purposes of applications by students for VSL. This excludes students’ Tax File Numbers.
51.1 Specific procedures
You must have procedures in place to:
- determine academic suitability [part 32] for a particular course (student entry procedure)
- determine and publish fee information [part 19.3] for students
- make the VSL application process clear to students (including submission deadlines)
- give students information about census days [part 26]
- publish your processes on your website in an easily accessible way
- assess a student’s competence in reading and numeracy [part 34] against the Australian Core Skills Framework
- report literacy and numeracy [part 34] competency results (student entry procedure)
- collect and verify documents from students who apply for VET Student Loans – for example
- student identity and date of birth
- the citizenship and residency requirements [part 31.1]
- tax file number certificate [part 30] showing a student has applied for a tax file number
- handle student information [part 45]
- determine tuition fees [part 19.1]
- manage student withdrawal from approved courses
- cancel a student’s enrolment [part 40.5] after census day
- recredit a student’s HELP balance [part 46]
- handle student complaints [part 48].
51.2 Publishing your processes and procedures
You must publish information about VSL on your website in a way that meets the requirements of both the Rules and the Act.
Examples of the information you must publish are:
- all the administrative requirements you must undertake to determine a student to be academically suited to undertake a particular approved course
- fee information for students for approved courses
- census days
- that students must submit their eCAFs by 11:59 pm AEST on or before the first census day for which they want to use VSL
- your student grievance processes.
Publishing requirements
These processes and procedures must be published prominently on your website and must be easily accessible without provision of login information. Please use the Publishing processes and procedure checklist [Appendix K] to ensure you meet all the requirements.
Legislation: Act s 48, Rules s 76–79, s 85–88, s 93, s 118