Compliance Monitoring Framework

Overview

The Compliance Monitoring Framework supports our regulatory oversight of providers’ compliance and enhances community confidence that the quality of Australian higher education is maintained. 

The framework assists TEQSA to perform its core regulatory functions and powers under the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Act 2011, Education Services for Overseas Students Act 2000 and subordinate legislation and is informed by our statements about our Approach to Quality Assurance and Regulation and Compliance and Enforcement.

Figure 1: Key elements of TEQSA’s compliance monitoring cycle

The framework is reviewed by TEQSA’s Commission annually, or where there is significant change affecting the sector, to ensure it reflects changing regulatory risks and remains effective.

Framework elements

Identify

TEQSA’s broad compliance monitoring activities provide us with insight into emerging and current risks to the sector, as well as common risks to provider quality assurance practices.

This assists us to identify and focus on the areas of non-compliance that pose the greatest risk to students and the quality, integrity and reputation of the higher education sector.

TEQSA monitors and identifies risk through a number of interconnected and complementary activities, including:

• TEQSA’s annual provider Risk Assessment Framework, a tool to identify risk, which provides a snapshot of each higher education provider, including regulatory history 
• assessments for renewal of TEQSA and CRICOS registration and accreditation
• compliance assessments and investigations, and enforcement action
• information and intelligence from various sources, including peak and professional accreditation bodies, other government agencies, concerns and material change notifications
• sector-wide thematic analyses and consultation/engagement with key stakeholders.

Prioritise

We set compliance priorities within agreed risk tolerance parameters, approved by TEQSA’s Commission, to guide our compliance monitoring activities for the greatest regulatory impact to protect students and the quality, integrity and reputation of the sector. These are reviewed on an annual basis to ensure they remain relevant and reflective of risk in the sector and are published in the annual compliance report.

As a risk-based regulator, TEQSA’s prioritisation model, based on the compliance priorities, is an essential component of our approach to compliance monitoring. It involves a robust triage process to promptly identify those issues that pose the greatest risks. This helps to prioritise TEQSA’s work and determine how best to allocate our resources. 

The Compliance Priorities, annual provider risk assessment and other information and intelligence sources feed into the development of an Annual Compliance Program. This is a proactive and forward-looking plan to target current, systemic and emerging risks. This targeted approach provides assurance that priority risk areas are being managed in the sector.

Action

TEQSA has a range of regulatory tools and statutory powers to address non-compliance. Our regulatory response is guided by the Compliance and Enforcement Policy, which documents principles for undertaking enforcement activities and supporting processes and procedures.

Where we identify that a provider is not complying (or is at substantial risk of not complying) with its obligations, our level of regulatory response will: reflect the level of risk identified, be proportionate to the issues we seek to address, be tailored to the individual circumstances so as to achieve the most effective compliance outcome.

Learn

Information gained from compliance monitoring activities and lessons learned from the action and response flow back into monitoring and assessment activities as regulatory intelligence.

We work across government, sharing resources, information and findings, where it is relevant to the functions and powers of other agencies. This joined up approach reduces duplication of effort and increases our knowledge base. 

Inform

We communicate information about our compliance monitoring activities to raise awareness and inform, which in turn helps the sector build capability through lessons learnt. We do this by tailoring and publishing education and guidance based on findings from compliance monitoring activities and through our annual compliance report. We also consult with the sector and key stakeholders, including peak bodies, to assist the sector to develop solutions to problems.

Framework principles

The Compliance Monitoring Framework is underpinned by the following contemporary best-practice regulatory principles: