The part where most people give up, and we do not let them

You almost certainly have not. Assessment queues move slowly and silence is rarely bad news, but you should not be sitting there guessing. Tell us who the assessor is and we will chase it — we have working relationships with our partner RTOs and a call from us tends to move faster than an email from a student.

Very common, and rarely fatal. Assessors accept a range of third-party evidence: a supervisor rather than the company, a client you worked for repeatedly, invoices and ABN records, statutory declarations in some circumstances. Ring us before you give up on the qualification — there is almost always another route to evidencing the same work.

This is the most common reason a care or education qualification stops dead. If you are already employed in the sector, placement can often be completed in your current workplace with your employer's agreement, which removes the problem entirely. If not, we escalate it with the RTO. Do not wait three months hoping it resolves itself.

A Unique Student Identifier is free and takes about five minutes at usi.gov.au. Every RTO requires it and nothing proceeds without it. If you have had one before, do not create a second — retrieve the original, otherwise your training record ends up split across two numbers.

Tell us before you decide, not after. Deferral, a changed delivery mode, extended timeframes and reduced study loads are all usually available and almost nobody knows to ask. Withdrawing is occasionally the right answer, but it should be a decision rather than something that happens by default.

Talk to us. Payment arrangements, deferral and — depending on the qualification and your eligibility — Smart and Skilled subsidy may change the picture. We would far rather have that conversation than watch someone abandon a qualification they were two units from finishing.