Entry Education’s response to article

On Monday February 3rd 2025, an article appeared in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald newspapers which revealed recent activities between the Australian Quality and Skills Authority (ASQA) and Entry Education (RTO:41529).

I want to take this opportunity to clarify some ambiguity contained in the article and qualify Entry Education’s position in relation to ASQA and the industry.

Firstly: Entry Education challenged ASQA’s attempt to deregister us in the Administrative Review Tribunal (ART) in January 2025 and we were granted an indefinite stay of the deregistration. The final order was proposed by ASQA and we agreed as it was conditional on a respected industry expert providing a report and recommendations on complex issues like the management of AI and the cheating websites.  We welcome the opportunity to gain a respected independent third-party expert’s opinion and taking their advice to potentially further improve what we believe are market leading practices. This process has commenced and has validated that we are running a strong compliant RTO, notwithstanding the opportunity to implement some innovative improvements that will further strengthen our commitment to quality education for our students and the industries we operate in.

Secondly: The ART Order allows Entry Education to continue to operate in an unrestricted manner. This means Entry Education is 100% open for business and continues to enrol and conduct courses. The Order provides ASQA assurances through independent governance that Entry Education is committed to further improving assessment practices in order to ensure the quality of training and assessment for future real estate agents and mortgage brokers is of the highest standard.

As you can imagine, the audit process which consumed 10 months of 2024 has been extremely distressing for us, as we believe we have been unfairly and erroneously targeted by ASQA.

Entry Education is largely supportive of ASQA and its regulation of the industry. There are providers in the industry who are not doing the right thing and, as suggested in the article, are undermining the industry through fraudulent behaviour. Entry Education supports any action taken to remove these providers from the market.

However, we believe ASQA’s “tip off” line and investigations function has been hijacked and abused largely by businesses seeking to cause harm to their competitors. This has placed immense pressure on ASQA and we believe resulted in large operations like Entry Education being unfairly targeted. We have evidence our competitors have colluded in at least two separate meetings with regulators to cause harm to Entry Education. This included one meeting that has been acknowledged by ASQA, where the Real Estate Institutes from four separate states, who are independent businesses that all compete with Entry Education, met with ASQA and discussed at length their issues with Entry Education.  These are businesses, that claim to be peak industry bodies, however, hold RTO licenses and compete directly with Entry Education. They have a vested interest in discrediting Entry Education and manipulating the regulatory function to support their cause. Unfortunately, whilst these organisations continue to operate as competing businesses to Entry Education it is difficult to accept they are acting in the interest of industry or genuinely in the role of a peak industry body.

It is clear ASQA, like the whole of the education community, is struggling with the adoption of AI and other digital information now available to students on “cheating” websites. We do not believe the fault for this should be laid at the feet of training organisations alone and believe much more guidance and assistance needs to be provided by ASQA to help the industry develop the strategies and tools to both embrace and combat the issue, rather than just kicking the can down the road by attempting punitive punishments for RTOs.

We encourage everyone in the industry to call on ASQA to work with industry, rather than against it, to find a path forward. Otherwise, we fear the industry is genuinely at risk.

It goes without saying Entry Education disagrees and is extremely disappointed with the treatment afforded it by ASQA. We communicated this to ASQA early last year after it decided to investigate us only two months after its own auditors completed a thorough audit process and extended our registration for the maximum seven-year period.

As many of you will know, I have been a member of the VET community for over 25 years and in that time have led four RTOs, including Entry Education. In all my time I have never seen an organisation treated the way Entry Education has recently been.

I have been heartened that since the article I have received overwhelming support from many senior stakeholders in the industry who are equally shocked and appalled. And while they have commended us for standing up to the injustice, they, too, are also fearful of what ASQA’s actions will mean for their RTO and for the industry in general.

Which is why, as I mentioned above, we all need to work together to find a path forward. I would greatly appreciate anyone who would like to reach out to discuss.

Matthew Trounce

Chief Executive Officer