COMPETENCY BASED EDUCATION FOR REAL ESTATE AGENTS

In Australia vocational educational qualifications are mandated in the property industry for occupational licensing. The property profession encompasses property agents, for example, real estate agents, business agents, auctioneers and strata managing agents and also extends to the registered valuer. A provider of recognised certificate and diploma courses (non-degree courses) must be a registered training organisation (RTO). The required educational standards and conditions are embedded within the VET Quality Framework, and the national regulator, the Australian Skills Quality Authority (ASQA) assesses the RTOs compliance against this framework. The purpose of the framework is to achieve national consistency of high-quality training and assessment for all RTOs. Students are now assessed on a variety of competency based assessment tools, which includes recognition of prior learning for designated learning outcomes. In addition, exams and assignments are marked as “competent” or “not competent” without an allocated mark or grade. This has led to issues of performance and motivation for the students when the results do not accurately reflect the students’ graded level of achievement. Therefore, this research paper examines the features associated with competency based education, in a vocational context, and discusses the benefits and disadvantages with this method of educational assessment.