A positive encounter with the NCVER USI Transcript Update Tool

By John Lund, 11 July 2017

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I wonder how many RTOs out there in Training land have had a go at testing the USI Registry’s new Student Transcript facility? NCVER have been promising/threatening us for a few months that they were going to introduce the system and it finally went live a few weeks ago.

In theory, it all sounded like a good idea: students would be able to check, and get official print outs of their qualifications and Statements of Attainments. If any errors were detected by the student then they could get the RTO to correct the errors and omissions. Finally, we were getting a system that had outputs as well as inputs. However, as the saying goes, ‘garbage in/garbage out’. NCVER, through the USI Registry provided plenty of assistance and support in getting RTOs ready, but to me it all sounded a tad bureaucratic to me and I was cynical enough to believe that either the system would be overly complicated, or just create more frustration!

Well, I decided to test my cynicism yesterday. First I checked out NCVER’s FAQ document at https://www.usi.gov.au/documents/inaccurate-transcript-questions-students and found some good and bad news: the doc told me where to go to start the process, but warned me that students needed to access their own USI accounts in order to give me permission to check and amend their transcripts. So, knowing that most of my completed students had never heard of the USI transcript facility let alone access their account and give me the needed permission, I ventured onto the wild side through our old friend https://avs.ncver.edu.au/avs/.

For anyone who hasn’t tried this facility yet, the process is surprisingly easy to access: just login and hit ‘collections’ same as the regular data reporting. But now you will get a drop down menu for USI transcript updates. Put in the USI for the student, that you want to check and you will get a transcript of their recorded qualifications. If something is missing provide the year of completion, and qualification, follow a number of apparently redundant ‘submits’ and the job is done. By 6.00pm last night I had a message saying that the updates had been recorded (I missed reporting a qualification back in 2015 that I fixed up).

So, overall a positive quick experience. Interestingly, I got a warning that the student I was updating hadn’t given me permission to do so (no surprise there), but it didn’t stop the updating!

I recommend this NCVER USI Transcript Update Tool to all other RTOs. The annual reporting depends on your Student Management System and, at least in my case the NAT files can suffer from operator error. Here is an easy way to fix up your operator errors without having to wait until the next reporting period.

Contributor’s information: John has been working in the VET industry for more than 35 years and is Meshed Group’s senior trainer and a CEO of an RTO. In his spare time, he loves reading nonfiction and enjoys spending time with his family.

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