Module 6 · The standard
Competence & the Benchmark
What exactly are you training people to, and who decided?
9 min read
Everything above this point is about how you train. This module is about what you are training to. Competence has three parts, and there are two benchmarks in play at once — the national one and your organisation's. Knowing which is which is the difference between a defensible training program and an expensive one.
What you'll take away
- Competence = knowledge + skills + attitude. All three, or it isn't competence.
- There are two benchmarks: national and organisational. You need both.
- The unit code itself tells you the AQF level and the industry field.
- A session plan is P.O.O.H. — plan and prepare, operate, operations, housekeeping.
The three parts of competence
Two out of three is a common and expensive failure. Someone with knowledge and skills but the wrong attitude is more dangerous than someone with neither, because they are trusted.
- Knowledge
- They understand why. The reasoning behind the task, not just its steps.
- Skills
- They can perform the task, to standard, under real conditions.
- Attitude
- Values and safety. The part that decides what happens when nobody is watching — and the part no written assessment reaches on its own.
Two benchmarks
Training that meets the national benchmark but not the organisation's produces people who are certified and still can't do the job here. Training that meets the organisation's but not the national one produces capability you cannot certify. Both, every time.
- The national benchmark
- Qualifications, units of competency, accredited courses, and the registered training organisations authorised to deliver them. This is the floor, set outside your business.
- The organisation's benchmark
- The training and assessment strategy, learning program, assessment tools and assessment instruments that say how your organisation meets that floor — on its site, with its equipment, for its work.
The benchmark is not paperwork you satisfy after the fact. It is the thing you are aiming at while you design the session.
Reading the Australian Qualifications Framework
AQF level tells you the cognitive demand you are training and assessing at, and it should visibly change how you write questions. A Certificate I audience needs detailed pictures, descriptive diagrams, single-word multiple choice and true/false. By Certificate IV you are asking indirect multiple choice and indirect sentence responses — because the qualification is about applying specialised knowledge in varied contexts, and a question that only tests recall cannot show that.
The same content pitched at the wrong AQF level is not merely too hard or too easy. It is assessing something other than what the unit requires.
Reading a unit of competency
A unit code is not a serial number. Take RIIVEH201D — Operate Light Vehicle. The training package identifier, industry field, AQF level, sequence number and version identifier are all encoded in it, and the title gives you the action word and a brief statement of the outcome.
The action word is the one to read carefully: operate, plan, conduct, monitor. It sets what evidence will have to show, and therefore what your session has to build.
P.O.O.H. — the session plan
P.O.O.H. is a personal session plan, not a document for a folder. It is the structure that lets you walk into a session knowing the sequence without reading from a script.
- 1
Plan and prepare
What's the work activity? What SOPs and PPE do I need? What are the hazards and risks?
- 2
Operate
Buttons and dials. The controls, and what each one does.
- 3
Operations
The real work — pre-start, park up, emergency stop, isolation, the operational sequences the role actually runs.
- 4
Housekeeping
What is left unsaid? Close any gaps. The step most often skipped, and where most gaps live.