In the Australian Further Education sector all education is based on national training packages which are designed and managed to meet the needs of different industries.
They provide specifications of training elements; the associate performance criteria; expected required knowledge and skills all benchmarked against defined evidence guides.
Significantly the do not define content or how the content should be taught with regard to both depth and scope.
The advantage of this approach is flexibility with respect to interpretation and implementation.
The disadvantage is potential differences in implementation.
Three implementations were evaluated to assess this potential problem.
The results clearly show an extreme difference in implementation.
This cannot be consistent with national benchmarked standards. Further work is needed.