Mandatory Privacy Notice and Student Declaration for Australian RTOs

Friday, May 3, 2019

Note that this information has been updated to reflect the 2019 requirements for mandatory privacy notices for RTOs to students

For Australian based Registered Training Organisations (RTOs) the Australian Federal Government Department of Education and Training has issued NEW guidance on a mandatory privacy notice provided to all students upon enrolment. Currently CourseSales.com includes a Terms field on Document forms for when a student enrols on a course. To configure CourseSales.com to include this notice we recommend you add as part of the existing Terms.

Skills required

Actions

  • Add the text to the Section 1 content of your terms, found in Publish>Content (you can copy and paste, but use the ‘paste as text’ button in the edit area on CourseSales.com)

Note

  • You should immediately see this on all enrolment forms.

  • You may have multiple terms - be sure to update all that require this content.

  • When you update terms content there is no version control of the Terms as related to the document. That is if you update the Terms to include the Privacy Notice, these update on all current, future and past documents. While there is a date reference (the support ticket) as to when the Terms changed and a time stamp stored in CourseSales.com for when the Terms were agreed, when you view any past documents the new Privacy Notice incorporated into the Terms will be viewed, but may not have been present at the time of agreement.

If you wish to have this as a separate form (for GDPR requirements for example) do the following:

Skills required

Actions

  • Visit Publish>Content and create new content eg ‘Privacy Notice and Student Declaration’ of the type ‘Field’ (you can copy and paste, but use the ‘paste as text’ button in the edit area on CourseSales.com). Insert your company name where prompted in the text.

  • Visit Forms>Fields>New and create a field eg ‘Privacy Terms’ of the type ‘Content field’, 100% width, selecting the content created in step 1.

  • Create a field, with a name and label eg ‘Privacy Terms Agreed’ of the type ‘Checkbox’ , 100% width.

  • Add these two fields to the document forms as necessary,

  • Save and publish the forms.

Note

  • Any student registered for a course in CourseSales.com prior to the Privacy Notice being implemented will not have a check in the “agreed” Privacy Notice checkbox.

  • You may wish to make the checkbox mandatory for Public draft and Submit (otherwise students may not select that they agree to it)

  • It is assumed that this will need to be completed for each enrolment - however if one agreement is sufficient for the student and it is important to record this agreement with the student details, then add this field to the contact form.

  • You could also include the text of the Privacy Notice and Student Declaration, and/or terms within emails sent to the student - this would require modifying the email template that is sent upon registration.

  • There is also an option to include an audio version of the Privacy Notice/Terms on the registration page - for those who would prefer to listen rather than read it, or to be played to a student over the telephone.

Frequently asked questions

I am an RTO, is this a requirement on all registrations for all the courses that are delivered by your training organisation?

Please check with NCVER or your STA if you are not sure which courses this mandatory Privacy Notice and Student Declaration applies to ; if confirmed it is not necessary then just leave the existing 2018 document forms without a checked Privacy Notice - no action is required.

Where can I get further information?

If you require further information there is a contact number and email address available via the https://www.education.gov.au/national-vet-data-frequently-asked-questions page:

If you do not find the answer to your question here, further questions may be directed through the Skilling Australia information line on 13 38 73 or via email at VET-DataPolicy@education.gov.au.