TEQSA accreditation and quality assurance are two views of the same system. Accreditation is the point-in-time decision that a course meets the Threshold Standards; quality assurance is the continuing machinery that keeps it meeting them, and it is that machinery TEQSA now reads at renewal through self-assurance. A provider that builds one architecture for both spends less and answers fewer questions.
This article explains how course accreditation, self-assurance and renewal fit together, and describes a quality assurance architecture that serves all three. It draws on fifteen years of TEQSA registration, accreditation and renewal work with private providers.
What accreditation decides and what it does not
Course accreditation under the TEQSA Act 2011 is a decision that a specific course, at a specific AQF level, meets the Threshold Standards as designed. TEQSA assesses course design against Standard 3.1, staffing against 3.2, assessment against 1.4 and the course approval process against 5.1. For a registered provider the current fee is $5,200 for the preliminary assessment and $19,100 for the substantive assessment of a course.
What accreditation does not decide is whether the course will be delivered well. It is a judgment on a plan. That gap is where quality assurance lives, and it is why our article on TEQSA course accreditation treats the accreditation submission as the start of the course's regulatory life rather than its end.
Why TEQSA accreditation quality assurance is now one conversation
Until recently, a provider could treat accreditation and renewal as separate projects, each with its own Confirmed Evidence Table. TEQSA has retired those tables for registration and moved to self-assurance, in which the provider lodges a self-assurance report of no more than ten pages with an evidence index, and TEQSA assesses on a risk basis informed by compliance history, annual data and the strength of the evidence, as its renewal of registration guide explains.
The practical effect is that the evidence TEQSA wants at renewal is the same evidence a functioning quality system produces every year: course review reports, moderation records, student outcome data considered by the academic board, and the actions taken in response. The TEQSA accreditation quality assurance cycle, if I can put it that way, has become a single loop. A provider that can show the loop turning has its renewal evidence already.
The architecture that serves both
The architecture I recommend has four layers. The first is the course lifecycle: a documented pathway from concept through academic board approval, accreditation, annual monitoring, periodic comprehensive review and re-accreditation or teach-out, with Standard 5.3's seven-year maximum built in.
The second is the data layer: a small set of indicators per course, such as admissions against entry standards, progression, attrition, grade distributions, student feedback and complaints, reported to the academic board on a fixed calendar. The third is the moderation and integrity layer: moderation, external benchmarking and integrity cases. The fourth is the governance layer: the academic board's minutes, its annual report to the corporate board, and the corporate board's response. Our piece on achieving quality assurance through TEQSA expands on these.
What private providers get wrong
The most common error I see is building quality assurance as a documentation exercise rather than an operating one. A provider writes monitoring, review and benchmarking policies and produces none of the reports they require until an application is due. The standards are written in the present tense. TEQSA looks for evidence of operation, and a review report dated the month before lodgement is evidence of the opposite.
The second error is separating the quality system from the academic board. Quality reports that go to a management committee and never reach the academic board leave Standard 6.3 unsatisfied, because academic governance is required to oversee academic quality, not to be informed of it occasionally. The third error, common among providers with vocational roots, is running quality assurance as a continuous improvement register in the RTO style. That is compliance governance, not academic governance. The wider context is in our article on private higher education in Australia and TEQSA.
How renewal reads the system
At renewal TEQSA requires, in addition to the self-assurance report, independent reviews of the governing body and of academic governance against Domain 6 with an action plan, and evidence of risk management. It does not require evidence against every standard. That is often misread as a lighter burden; in my experience it is heavier, because the choice of what to show is itself assessed.
A provider with the architecture above chooses easily. Its self-assurance report points to the last cycle of course reviews, the academic board's consideration of the indicators, the actions taken and the results. Its evidence index cites documents that already exist. A provider without it writes ten pages about intentions.
Where accreditation and quality assurance meet in practice
The point at which the two systems most visibly meet is re-accreditation. When a course comes up for renewal of accreditation, at a fee of $24,500 per course, TEQSA looks for the comprehensive review the provider's own policy promised, the external input to it, the changes made and the academic board's approval of the revised course. A provider whose system ran submits that material from its files. A provider whose system did not run commissions a review in a hurry and hopes the dates are not noticed.
That is the whole argument for treating TEQSA accreditation quality assurance as one design problem. Build the loop once, run it every year, and every regulatory event becomes a report on what already happened.
My advice to a private provider starting out
Design the quality architecture before the first course is accredited, size it to the provider you are, and make the academic board its owner from the first meeting. Then run it. The providers that find renewal straightforward are the ones whose academic board can produce three years of minutes showing quality being assured.
Download the Darlo Re-registration Evidence Index Template
— a standard-by-standard index that maps a working quality system to the evidence TEQSA reads at renewal, drawn from our TEQSA registration and governance work with private providers. Get the template
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Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between TEQSA accreditation and quality assurance?
Accreditation is TEQSA's decision that a course meets the Threshold Standards as designed. Quality assurance is the provider's continuing system for monitoring, reviewing and improving the course in delivery, which TEQSA examines at renewal.
How often must a private provider review its accredited courses?
Standard 5.3 requires comprehensive review at least every seven years, with regular interim monitoring. In my experience annual monitoring against a fixed set of indicators, considered by the academic board, is what TEQSA expects to see.
Does TEQSA still use Confirmed Evidence Tables?
Not for higher education registration, where they have been replaced by a self-assurance report with an evidence index. They remain in use for CRICOS applications.
Who should own quality assurance in a private provider?
The academic board, under Standard 6.3, with the corporate board receiving an annual academic quality report under Standard 6.2. Quality reports that stop at a management committee leave academic governance unsatisfied.
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.