NSW: Smart and Skilled Reporting Essentials

Smart and Skilled is the unique reporting guidelines used by Training Organisations within New South Wales. It incorporates some unique requirements and processes to submit student data for funding.

This article serves to better clarify some of these particular requirements.

Commitment IDs

All Smart and Skilled enrolments require a Commitment ID, as this is used for funding. The Commitment ID is entered in a NSW Client Enrolment in the following area:

The Commitment ID identifies this Smart and Skilled enrolment to NSW DET, and is required for funding. There are unique types of ID:

• Quote IDs start with a Q.
• Commitment IDs start with a C.
• School-based Commitment IDs start with an S.

If an entered Commitment ID does not start with one of these letters, the student enrolment will not be captured when generating state AVETMISS files.

You can obtain a Commitment ID by ticking the following tickbox above the Commitment ID field:

You will then need to enter any relevant information on the Eligibility Info tabs at the bottom of this page. You can then use the Utility menu -> NSW claims -> Provider Calculator Export to export a file for uploading to the NSW Provider Calculator.

Once done, you can then import the results, (including the new Commitment IDs) back into VETtrak using the Provider Calculator Results Import. Alternatively, you can obtain the Commitment ID manually on the NSW Smart and Skilled website and enter it into this field.

Multiple enrolments within VETtrak can contain the same commitment ID as a way of grouping enrolments together. When entering an existing commitment ID in a new enrolment where the ID has already been entered against another enrolment VETtrak will alert you and ask you to confirm that you would like to link the enrolment to this commitment ID.

When any unit within the commitment ID has a start and finish date that overlaps the AVETMISS collection year all units within the commitment ID are reported even if they have dates which fall outside the collection year.

If you have entered the same Commitment ID against multiple enrolments, changing the Commitment ID associated information on one affects all those enrolments. You can `unlink' an enrolment from the Commitment ID by blanking out the Commitment ID and tabbing out of the field -VETtrak will ask you to confirm the unlinking. You could then enter a new Commitment ID, which would apply to just this enrolment.

'Complete' Enrolments

NSW Smart and Skilled requires that once a student has completed their learning, that the details for that enrolment are no longer reported moving forward.

In order to facilitate this, within the Enrolment Wizard for a NSW student, you can make use of a Complete checkbox under the Commitment Info area:

Once you finalised reporting for an individuals enrolment, checking this box will toggle the enrolment (and any relevant/linked Awards) to no longer be captured when generating AVETMISS for NSW.

Blank Outcomes

For NSW Enrolments, VETtrak allows the recording of Blank outcomes:

This means you can record a Result for a unit within an enrolment, and only record dates for that unit which will report the unit as Not Yet Started (85) in the NAT00120 file.

When the student starts or completes the unit, you can then record the Result (such as Continuing or Competent) to reflect that the student has started the unit.

When any unit is reported in Generate State AVETMISS for NSW, all units for the enrolment are reported.

Training Not Completed (TNC)

If a student is not to complete their training, you may be asked to report them as Training Not Completed or 'TNC'.

This is achieved in the Students Enrolment Wizard, on Page 2 - the same page you enter a Commitment ID, under the Training Status heading:

Selecting this item will report the 'TNC' status as requested by State Training Services.

Apprenticeship/Traineeship Details For Contract Enrolments

For NSW, a recorded TCID or Contract Code MUST contain a forward slash ( / ) to report a Training Contract ID.

Within your NAT files, this will be reported in it's entirety within the Training Contract ID field, with the section before the forward slash reported as the STA Client Number, shown below:

NSW Specific AVETMISS Generation Options

There are a couple of options that appear when generating New South Wales NAT files that are worth being aware of, these include:

NSW Smart and Skilled generation: Only enrolments with a Commitment ID that begin with 'C', 'S' or 'Q' will be included when generating the NAT files. This will also include other enrolled units within the same Commitment ID regardless of their result dates provided at least one unit under the Commitment ID falls in the collection year.

Include past units linked to reported awards: Reports all units linked to a Reportable award even if the result dates of those units are before the current collection year.

NSW ACE reporting: Includes all enrolments that are Nationally or State reported if they have a location in New South Wales. These are included regardless of Funding or the Commitment ID on the Enrolment.

Using the AVETMISS Validation Software (AVS)

A unique requirement of Smart and Skilled reporting is that all State AVETMISS Files (NAT files) must be validated using the AVETMISS Validation Software on the NCVER website prior to submission.

Once this Validation is completed, you can then save an AVS Validation Summary File to include with your NAT file submission to State Training Services. 

Preliminary Data Checks

Preliminary checks are conditions that you can set prior to validating the AVETMISS files with the NCVER websites AVETMISS Validation Software.

There are three boxes you need to select to accommodate NSW specific requirements:

• "Exclude all validations relating to Activity End Date on NAT00120"
• "Exclude all validations relating to Activity Start Date on NAT00120"
• "Exclude validations relating to Blank Outcome Identifier - National on NAT00120"

Not ticking these boxes will result in errors that will stop you from exporting the required AVS Summary File.

AVS Validation Summary File

Once your files have successfully been validated within the AVETMISS Validation Software, you will require to save the Export Summary:

This file will save with your Training Organisation Name at the end of it - appearing as "CollectionProcessingSummaryReport<trainingorganisationname>.csv"

You can then provide this file, alongside your validated NAT files as a submission to STS.