Measured

The item 14 enrolment cut-off, measured

20 August 2026 · every live RTO scope on the register, read product by product

835products reach their computed item 14 enrolment cut-off within 90 days
591live scopes carry at least one of them
2calendar days those 835 computed cut-offs fall on

835 superseded training products sitting on 591 live RTO scopes reach their computed item 14 enrolment cut-off within the next 90 days — and every one of them falls on just two days, 694 of them on 5 September 2026 alone. That is 16.3% of the 3,628 ASQA-regulated providers with a current registration — the ones item 14 binds — reaching the same date at the same time. It is not a breach finding and not a prediction: it is arithmetic the register publishes the inputs for and never performs.

The date the register never computes

When a training product is superseded, the register shows the replacement — and stops there. Item 14 of the 2025 Compliance Standards (F2025L00355, in force 1 July 2025) attaches a date to that event: under s 14(1)(a)(i), as ASQA's published guidance reads it (ASQA guidance, read live 25 August 2026), new enrolments into the superseded product are not permitted from one year after its replacement joined the national register — later if ASQA has approved otherwise. Learners already enrolled are on a different clock with no fixed date: they finish or transfer "in a timely manner".

Both halves of that arithmetic are public. The register publishes the supersession link and the replacement's inclusion date, but it does not add the year, does not filter the result to a provider's own scope, and does not tell anyone the answer. That is the whole gap this measurement fills.

Why it is a cliff, not a slope

The dates are not spread across the quarter. They cluster, because the register does not publish replacements one at a time: a training package release moves hundreds of products on the same day, so their cut-offs land on the same day one year later.

Computed cut-off dateProducts reaching itShare of the 90-day total
4 September 202614116.9%
5 September 202669483.1%
All cut-offs within 90 days835100%

A provider reaching one of these dates still has every option open: enrol the final intake into the superseded product before it, move new intakes to the replacement, or apply to ASQA for an extension. What it cannot do is set that date itself: it arrives on the register's schedule, and only ASQA can move it.

Which products, and how many scopes

Two qualifications account for most of it, and they are among the most widely delivered in the country. Each code links to its own page, with the full chain and the computed dates:

ProductComputed cut-offLive scopes
CHC52021Diploma of Community Services5 September 2026348
CHC50121Diploma of Early Childhood Education and Care5 September 2026317
MEM31922Certificate III in Engineering - Fabrication Trade4 September 202665
MEMSS00002Non-Destructive Testing - Level 2 NDT practitioner4 September 202661
CHC50421Diploma of Youth Work5 September 202616
CHC50321Diploma of Child, Youth and Family Intervention5 September 202613
MEM80122Graduate Diploma of Engineering4 September 20269
MEASS00305LME035 Airframe - B1 Licence Exclusion E14 Removal4 September 20266

The replacements are all flagged equivalent by the register, which makes the transition simpler — but it does not move the date. The equivalence flag describes the mapping between the old product and the new one; item 14 fixes when the old one stops taking new enrolments either way.

September is the first wave, not the last

The 90-day window above is an editorial choice, not a property of the data. Run the same arithmetic with no window at all and 2,042 scope instances across 922 providers have a computed cut-off still ahead of them — and they fall on just 13 dates between September 2026 and July 2027, for the same reason as before: a training package release moves whole cohorts of products on the same day, so their computed cut-offs land together one year later.

Computed cut-offLargest product in the waveProductsLive scopesNo equivalent replacement
4 September 2026MEM31922Certificate III in Engineering - Fabrication Trade (65)1411010
5 September 2026CHC52021Diploma of Community Services (348)6945210
25 November 2026UEE22020Certificate II in Electrotechnology (Career Start) (45)52450
3 December 2026MSM30318Certificate III in Manufactured Mineral Products (2)220
22 December 2026HLT37215Certificate III in Pathology Collection (35)50396
23 December 2026CHC30121Certificate III in Early Childhood Education and Care (371)4703860
2 February 2027AMPSS00044Meat Processing Core Skill Set (27)15627132
4 February 2027CPC10120Certificate I in Construction (116)1411350
13 March 2027MSF30919Certificate III in Blinds, Awnings, Security Screens and Grilles (2)222
17 March 2027AUR40216Certificate IV in Automotive Mechanical Diagnosis (123)2831740
20 May 2027DEF10117Certificate I in Defence Skills (2)220
9 July 2027AUR32120Certificate III in Automotive Body Repair Technology (26)45410
30 July 2027POL58121Diploma of Police Search and Rescue Coordination (Marine / Land) (2)420
All computed cut-offs still ahead2,042922*140

* Distinct providers — one provider can sit in several waves, so the column does not sum. The last column is deliberately strict: an instance counts only when every replacement the register names is flagged not equivalent. If even one equivalent pathway exists, it does not count — so the 140 shown are the instances where the transition cannot ride an equivalence mapping at all.

The September cliff has its own page now: the eight products behind it, what replaces each one and the release dates the arithmetic runs from, checked by hand against the live register.

Two more of these waves are worth naming. On 23 December 2026 the largest single-product wave after September arrives: CHC30121 Certificate III in Early Childhood Education and Care, on 371 live scopes by itself — measured on its own page. And on 2 February 2027 comes the wave where equivalence runs out: 132 of its 156 instances — meat processing products, concentrated on 27 providers — have no equivalent replacement named at all, measured product by product here.

Every date in this table is the computed floor as of the same 20 August 2026 read: ASQA can extend any of them for a given provider, and each new register release adds a new wave a year out. The calendar grows at the register's pace.

And the windows already past

Looking backwards from the same read: 26 products on 14 live scopes are already past their computed cut-off. That number needs splitting, because the instrument only commenced on 1 July 2025:

Computed cut-off (inclusion + 1 year)ProductsRTOs
Fell on or after 1 July 2025 — with item 14 in force2210
Fell before 1 July 2025 — the computed date predates the current rule4
All computed cut-offs already past2614

What stands out is how small that whole column is: 26 instances across 3,628 providers. Whatever else is true of the sector, it is not sitting on a pile of long-expired enrolment windows. Most of the 26 22 of them — passed since the instrument commenced, a median of 6 months ago, and they cluster in a handful of agricultural qualifications. Only 4 have a computed date predating the rule, under the framework the repealed 12-month rule belonged to. And a product can sit on a scope past its computed cut-off with nothing wrong at all: the provider may have stopped enrolling into it long ago and simply never removed the scope entry.

How this was measured

Every live scope, read product by product, in one day. 3,984 of the organisations flagged as RTOs on training.gov.au were read on 20 August 2026 — one did not answer — and every date on this page, including "past" and "within 90 days", is measured against that same day. The population for every figure is the 3,628 providers that are both current and ASQA-regulated, out of 3,888 current registrations on the register; both counts come from the register's own facets rather than from our tally. A scope entry counts if it has no end date or an end date of that day or later, and only qualifications, accredited courses and skill sets — the products a learner enrols in — are counted.

The date is computed the way the site computes it. For each superseded product we take its replacement as the register names it, the replacement's inclusion date as the date of its first release on the register, and the cut-off as that date plus one year. Where the register names several replacements, we use the one that gives the latest cut-off — the reading most favourable to the provider — so the counts here are floors by construction. Three of the largest results were then checked by hand against the live register, product by product, before publishing.

What was excluded, and counted as excluded. None. Every superseded product found on a live scope named at least one replacement with a published inclusion date, so a cut-off could be computed for all 2,068 instances. Had any lacked one, it would have been excluded from every count above and reported here rather than silently filled in.

ASQA-regulated providers only. Item 14 is an instrument of the national regulator, so it binds RTOs regulated by ASQA. Providers registered only with a state regulator — VRQA in Victoria, TAC in Western Australia — sit on the same national register but answer to their own instrument, and the register says which is which in each provider's registrationManager field. Every figure here is ASQA-only: 3,628 providers of the 3,888 with a current registration. That distinction is not cosmetic — counting the state-regulated providers too would have multiplied the "already past" figure more than twentyfold, and every one of those would have been a provider item 14 does not bind.

What this does not say

  • It does not say anyone is in breach. ASQA can extend the enrolment cut-off, and we cannot see which extensions apply to which provider. Every date on this page is the computed date, absent an extension we cannot know about — which is also why a window counted as past may in fact still be open.
  • It does not put a clock on enrolled students. The one-year date is for new enrolments only. Students already enrolled in a superseded product have no fixed deadline — ASQA's guidance (ASQA guidance, read live 25 August 2026) says there is no longer a requirement to transition or teach out within a specific period.
  • It does not say anything about intake. The register records what is on a provider's scope, not who is enrolled in it. A product on scope past its cut-off may have had no new enrolment in years; a product approaching one may have none planned. Only the provider knows.
  • It does not claim to be the only count. The major student management platforms we checked — aXcelerate, VETtrak, Wisenet and Cloud Assess — do not document computing the item 14 enrolment cut-off on their public sites, and no published sector-wide count of it appeared in our searches. If one appears, we will link it.

Your own dates

This page is the register-wide picture. The per-provider version is free: type an RTO code and the check lists every superseded product on that live scope with its computed item 14 enrolment cut-off — the same arithmetic as this article, one scope at a time.

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