A course review report TEQSA will treat as evidence has eight parts: a defined scope, the student and outcome data for the review period, benchmarking against comparable courses, external referencing of standards and assessment, findings that follow from the data, recommendations that follow from the findings, a costed and dated action plan, and a resolution of the academic board adopting it. A document with the first seven and not the eighth is a report. A document with the eighth and not the first seven is a formality. Standard 5.3 requires both.
This article explains how to build each part so that the whole document works as evidence at renewal, at re-accreditation and in a self-assurance report. It reflects fifteen years of TEQSA registration and re-accreditation work, during which I have read a great many course reviews that proved nothing.
What Standard 5.3 asks a course review to do
Standard 5.3 of the Threshold Standards requires a comprehensive review of every course at least every seven years, and it specifies what the review must draw on: external referencing, student outcomes data including progress, attrition and completion, and the views of students, staff and other stakeholders. It also requires that the review produce improvements and that those improvements are implemented.
The standard is written in the present tense, and that is the test. TEQSA is not asking whether you have a review policy or a review schedule. It is asking whether reviews happen, whether they find things, and whether what they find changes the course. The report is the only artefact that can show all three, which is why it needs to be built as evidence rather than as a summary. TEQSA's guidance notes on monitoring and review describe what it has found persuasive, with the usual caveat that guidance notes are not themselves Threshold Standards.
Our article on designing a continuous improvement framework deals with the cycle around the report; this one deals with the report itself.
Part one: scope
State what course is being reviewed, which version, which delivery locations and modes, which student cohorts and which years. State who conducted the review, who chaired it, and who the external members were. State the terms of reference the academic board set, and the date it set them.
The scope section fails when it is vague about time. A review that covers "recent years" cannot be checked against the data that follows. A review that covers the 2022 to 2025 intakes, on campus and online, at both delivery sites, can be. Assessors notice the difference immediately because it tells them whether the authors had a defined question to answer.
Part two: the data
This is the section that makes or breaks a course review report TEQSA assessors are reading. It should present, for the scope period, admissions by entry pathway, progress rates by unit, attrition by year of study, completions and time to completion, grade distributions, student survey results, and any graduate outcomes data the provider holds. Where the provider offers the course to international students, the data should be separated so that any difference is visible.
The data must be the provider's own and it must be presented honestly. In my experience the temptation is to lead with the survey results, which are usually good, and bury the attrition figure, which often is not. Assessors read data sections for what is missing. A review with no attrition figure will be assumed to have a bad one. Our article on what TEQSA expects as evidence of student learning explains which measures carry most weight.
Part three: benchmarking
Benchmarking places the course beside comparable courses at other providers: structure, entry requirements, unit-level outcomes, assessment approach, and where the data can be obtained, outcome measures. The purpose is to show the academic board that the course is pitched at the right AQF level and that its performance is within the range of the sector, or to explain why it is not.
The weakness I see most often is benchmarking against a single university with a much larger cohort and a different mission. Choose comparators that make sense, explain why you chose them, and be willing to record where your course compares poorly. A benchmark that shows nothing but strengths will be read as a benchmark chosen for that purpose.
Part four: external referencing
External referencing is different from benchmarking. It is the independent checking of your standards and assessment by academics outside the provider: moderation of a sample of graded work, review of assessment tasks against the learning outcomes, and comment on whether the grades awarded are consistent with the level. Standard 5.3 requires it and Standard 1.4 assumes it.
The report should name the referencing activities, the external academics involved, what they examined and what they found. If they found grade inflation in a unit, say so, and say what the response was. That candour is precisely what makes the document evidence, because it shows a mechanism capable of finding problems, and an assessor will trust every other finding more because of it.
Parts five and six: findings and recommendations
Findings must follow from the data, benchmarking and referencing. Each finding should cite the evidence it rests on. Recommendations must follow from the findings, and each should say which finding it addresses. This sounds pedantic, and it is, but the chain from evidence to finding to recommendation is what separates a review from an opinion.
The failure is a set of recommendations that any course review could have made: update the readings, improve engagement, refresh the assessment. When I see those I look for the finding they respond to, and usually there is none. A recommendation that says "redesign the assessment in unit four because external moderation found the grades a full band above comparable work" is one an assessor can verify a year later.
Part seven: the action plan
Every recommendation becomes an action with an owner, a date and, where money is involved, a cost. The action plan is the document the academic board will monitor and the document the next review will start from, so it needs to be specific enough to be checked. "Revise unit four assessment by the start of semester two 2027, owner: course coordinator, to be confirmed by external moderation of semester two grades" is a checkable action.
Keep the plan short. In fifteen years I have never seen a plan with forty actions fully delivered, and neither has TEQSA. Ten actions the board actually tracks are worth more than forty it notes once.
Part eight: the academic board resolution
The report is not complete until the academic board has considered it and resolved to adopt the action plan, and the minutes record the discussion. Standard 6.3 places course quality within the academic board's authority, and an assessor will look for the board exercising that authority rather than receiving a document. Minutes that record questions about the attrition figure and a request for a follow-up report in six months are the strongest evidence in the whole set.
This is also where the non-delegation principle applies. A consultant, a dean or a course team can write the report. Only the academic board can adopt it, and the record must show that it did on the basis of its own consideration. Our guide to achieving quality assurance through TEQSA sets that governance loop in its wider context.
What makes a course review report TEQSA evidence
An assessor reading a course review report TEQSA has been given at renewal is asking a simple question: did this review find anything, and did anything change? A report with real data, honest benchmarking, external referencing that found something, recommendations tied to findings, an action plan with dates, and a board resolution answers yes. That answer, repeated across every course, is what a self-assurance report can point to when it claims Standard 5.3 is met.
Download the Darlo Re-registration Evidence Index Template
— a structure for indexing course reviews, action plans and board resolutions against the Standards, drawn from our TEQSA registration work with private providers. Get the template
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Frequently asked questions
How often must a course be comprehensively reviewed for TEQSA?
Standard 5.3 requires a comprehensive review of each course at least every seven years, informed by external referencing, student outcomes data and stakeholder views, with improvements implemented as a result.
What data should a course review report include?
Admissions by pathway, unit progress rates, attrition by year, completions and time to completion, grade distributions, student survey results and any graduate outcomes data, covering the defined review period and separated by cohort where relevant.
Is benchmarking the same as external referencing?
No. Benchmarking compares the course's design and performance with comparable courses elsewhere. External referencing is independent checking of the provider's own assessment and grading standards by academics outside the provider. Standard 5.3 expects both.
Who has to approve a course review report?
The academic board, or the equivalent body responsible for academic governance under Standard 6.3. The minutes should record the board's consideration of the findings and its resolution to adopt the action plan.
Dr Brendan Moloney is CEO of Darlo Higher Education, Australia's largest specialist TEQSA consultancy. He holds a PhD from the University of Melbourne, is a Cambridge University Press author on governance in higher education, and has advised private providers on registration and course accreditation for more than fifteen years.