Out the back of a Haymarket suit shop, you can get your tradie qualification without sitting a test

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Off George Street, on the second floor of a mall in the heart of Haymarket, a small office sits dark and empty. If anyone managed to find the suite, no bigger than five square metres, they would find signage for a luxury tailor, by appointment only.

The small space also serves as the office of Australian Skills Certification (ASC), an education company offering recognition of prior learning courses for a range of construction qualifications, its website says.

Qualifications for construction, bricklaying, concreting, roof plumbing and solid plastering are offered after applicants send in several videos around three minutes in length and their resumé, said ASC owner Muhammad Rana.

“We assess your experience and issue the qualification,” Rana said, adding there were no tests of an applicant’s capabilities. He did not clarify how applicants’ assertions are verified.

“If you need qualifications, let me know; otherwise I’m not interested.”

Muhammad Rana from Australian Skills Certification.Credit:

Rana’s business is one of potentially thousands providing qualifications in the privatised vocational education sector, offering recognition of prior learning. The legitimate assessment process provides qualifications for people based on their existing skills and professional experience.

NSW Building Commissioner James Sherrard expressed concerns about qualifications issued entirely through recognition of prior learning, which often did not have any practical assessment.

“I feel that some level of competency-based assessment would be the minimum standard to support any sort of qualification,” he said.

Building Minister Anoulack Chanthivong apportioned blame for the issues with vocational qualifications to privatisation of the sector, saying the rise in colleges without the “proper vetting or the accreditation registration has certainly led to this particular situation”.

The listed address for vocational training college Australian Skills Certification is in a Haymarket shopping mall.Credit: Steven Siewert

The Australian Skills Qualification Authority (ASQA) was also at fault, the minister argued, adding that addressing the validity of qualifications needed to start at the “source” with the registration of private training organisations by the federal regulator of vocational training.

“This is something we relayed to our federal colleagues – that there needs to be significant improvement on this front – because we’re at the bottom of the chain,” Chanthivong said. “We’ve certainly raised our concerns about their enforcement and their compliance regime.”

But with the nation gripped by a housing supply crisis, the federal government has eased the requirements for workers in some trades to qualify for permanent residency in Australia. The policy has resulted in more construction courses offered by private training colleges and a rampant “cash for quals” scheme operating across NSW and Australia.

Analysis by Victoria University’s Associate Professor Peter Hurley for the Herald showed an explosion in construction course enrolments between 2015 and 2024, including a 2000 per cent increase in Cert III and IV building courses. There was a near-7500 per cent increase in civil engineering diplomas over the same period.

While Hurley said choosing to enrol in courses that aligned to migration outcomes was valid, the “biggest issue relates to trust”.

“We (and the government) are relying on the training and certification provided by all of these training organisations to verify the ability of certain people,” Hurley said.

“When there are ‘high stakes’ associated with an assessment (and the opportunity to get PR is most certainly high stakes) then these create conditions for what is generally called ‘shonky behaviour’.”

The Chinatown office suite that Australian Skills Certification shares with a tailor.Credit: Steven Siewert

Hurley said the establishment of a third-party verification assessment process, such as practical trade tests for those applying to migrate in certain industries, would put an end to this behaviour.

The National Electrical Contractors Association has long held concerns about the number of people who have received qualifications because of “recognised prior learning” but are inadequately trained or skilled to do the work.

Applicants for electrical licences in NSW can effectively be vetoed by NECA or the Electrical Trades Union, which can deny them a certificate of proficiency, unlike other building trades.

NECA policy director Neil Roberts said: “NSW Building Commission has been consulting with industry stakeholders for some time now about reforms such as independent competency assessments, which we support, though competency is only one part of the story and the investigation and enforcement regimes must also improve.”

The Australian Skills Quality Authority has oversight of the vocational education sector, while the NSW Building Commission issues licences based on those qualifications.

The Herald revealed last week that the building commission is yet to cancel about 500 building-related licences that were based on qualifications that were cancelled by ASQA last year due to serious compliance issues at the colleges that issued them.

The service offered by Rana reflects advertisements on Punjabi in Australia Facebook pages and offers pathways to permanent residency through recognition of prior learning courses with “no need to study or attend classes”.

“Want to settle in Australia? Get your RPL Certification for PR & Visa,” the advertisement states.

“If you’re applying for a Skilled Work Visa, (189, 190, 91, 482) or Permanent Residency, you need a recognised Australian qualification. With RPL, you can get certified based on your work experience! No need to study or attend classes.”

Construction is the first industry listed on the advertisement.

A Facebook advertisement for Recognised Prior Learning courses.Credit:

A snapshot of a 2023-24 visa invitation round – offered to three skilled visa pathways – shows there has been a disproportionate increase in Indian visa holders being offered through construction pathways. Four-fifths of the applications came from people already in Australia.

Representing 42 per cent of the 5208 invites, Indian tradesmen accounted for 58 per cent of the carpenter and joiners, 82 per cent of the painting trade workers, 65 per cent of the wall and floor tilers and 64 per cent of the plasterers, analysis by this masthead showed.

Australian Skills Certification’s website lists two other offices: an address in the northern Indian town of Rohtak, on the outskirts of New Delhi, and another in Islamabad, Pakistan. The email for ASC promotes itself as an “immigration maestro”.

The Herald’s Shoddy Sydney series has revealed the Building Commission was investigating the prevalence of hundreds of unsupported qualifications in the construction sector, with estimates that up to one-third of the industry’s qualifications could be illegitimate.

Former building commissioner David Chandler said industry leaders had been warning him about underqualified workers for a decade.

A spokeswoman for ASQA said recognition of prior learning without individual assessment to identify training requirements was “unacceptable”.

“ASQA has identified RPL being utilised inappropriately and with malicious intent as a critical regulatory risk priority,” she said.

“This includes identifying that RPL may be exploited as a skilled migration pathway and focusing our resources accordingly.”

She said the regulator’s intelligence suggested that sectors with skills shortages “are being exploited to award non-genuine qualifications”.

“Inadequate training can have critical community safety impacts in these sectors,” the spokeswoman said.

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