Our calendar booking system allows 30 minutes blocks at a time, and you can choose to do a phone call or Google Meet, or even send and email!

30 minutes is usually long enough for trainer support but you can always book an additional one if you need to.

The time used is the time spent by the trainer helping you via any form of communication.

So if it’s a fast question, perhaps a quick email sent is a good use of 15 minutes of your trainer time. But if you are stuck and can’t get your head around a concept or need help working out what to do for your assessment, a 30 minute Google Meet might be the fastest way to get the help you need, and a good use of your trainer time.

No, you can choose – Google Meet, phone or even email. It completely depends on what you need.

Some students prefer a phone call because they can listen and understand exactly what’s needed, or the nature of the question can easily be discussed.

Others are more visual or the content they need to discuss will need some screen sharing in order to explain. Google Meet does allow the trainer flexibility of sharing the screen to walk you through things or show you things that aren’t as easy to explain.

Google Meet can often be the fastest and clearest way to get the information you need when it’s not a quick email question, so keep that in mind when you book.

We only subtract the time you use from your 12 hours, not the amount of time you book. This is also the case if your time goes over (only possible if there isn’t another student booked in right after you).

We recommend you do your best to judge the amount of time you may need and just book that, but we know this isn’t always going to be possible.

With this package it is within 4 business days, so you will wait a maximum of 4 business days to get your submitted assessments back, and while there are no guarantees, we often get then back to you earlier than that.

They talk about it a lot in our reviews and testimonials… It’s one of the cool things we do for our students.

Having the faster turnaround time also makes a huge difference to your overall speed through to graduation. Have you seen how many assessments there are?

Some companies will have you wait 20 – 25 business days for a result per assessment. We highly recommend you ask about this when you’re researching other RTOs, so you can weigh up your actual course time for yourself.

In your Learner Portal you’ll have a special booking link for accessing the trainers.  It will show all the trainers, when they are free, and they will show up in 30 minute booking slots.

You aren’t limited to working with one specific trainer and they’re not all available at the same times so you can pick the next available.

All of our trainers are highly experienced, knowledgeable, patient and compassionate. If you check out our reviews on Trustpilot and Google, our students mention them all the time.

You’ll have the contact details for the Student Support Team in your Learner Portal for anything you need their help with! They’re pretty great at speedy customer service so you’ll be supported in all areas.

Contact Student Support and if they can’t answer it, they will let you know that time with a trainer is what you need, and you will have a link in your Learner Portal to the booking calendar to book trainer time.

If in doubt, if you get confused or stuck at any point – CONTACT STUDENT SUPPORT – that’s what their job is and they’re really good at customer service! They honestly just want to help you.

We have an internal policy of replying to emails in less than 8 business hours, and if we miss your call, we will get back to you within 4 business hours.

Our admin and student support team are pretty good at hitting these standards too!

If you haven’t finished your course within the 12 months enrolment period, you can purchase an extension.

• 1 week $75
• 1 month $300

Here are our refund policy details so you know ahead of time what you are entitled to and how we handle refunds if in the event, you change your mind for whatever reason.

Upon Application

• If you are found not to be suitable for entry into any of our programs, we will refund all monies paid.
• If you choose not to continue with the enrolment interview or application, we will refund monies paid, excluding the $150 application fee.

After Enrolment

• Fortress has a 7-day cooling-off period.
• This 7-day cooling-off period starts from the activation of your learner portal.  For example, if your learner portal is activated on March 1st, the 7-day cooling-off period ends on March 8th
• If you choose to withdraw within the 7 days cooling-off period, then a full refund of fees paid(excluding the application fee of $150) applies.
• If you choose to withdraw at any time after the 7-day cooling-off period ends, no refund is applicable, and the full balance of course fees will be due.

Please refer to our Refund Policy here for additional information

We highly recommend the Simulated Pathway because it’s a LOT easier, even if you’re already working in an RTO or for a training organisation, because if you choose this pathway, you’ll NEED to have access to their existing training strategies, assessment tools and have resources that you can use.  The list of what you’ll need if you choose this pathway, is below.

The great thing about this pathway is that you can choose the topic and focus of the training you design to be one you can actually use in your RTO once you’re done, or even use one they already offer.

It also means that you can use your RTO’s real live resources, assessment tools and existing strategies instead of having to create them from scratch, and when you need a fully qualified Trainer and Assessor* to observe you doing a live training for your assessment task, you can have one of your colleagues do that.

(* Conditions apply for observers in regards to their held qualifications and eligibility to be a workplace observer – you can find more information about this in the list below of what you will need if you choose this pathway).

“I Work In An RTO” – Workplace Pathway

Here is the list of things you will need to organise, find and make sure your RTO has (that is up to ASQA standards), or will allow you to access, so this pathway is easy and beneficial for you:

• The National Register of VET (Training.gov.au, or its successor)
• VET sector job role information
• Information relevant to an entry-level VET teacher, trainer and assessor about:
  • Organisational requirements
  • Legislative and VET regulatory requirements, and associated guidance information.
  • Organisational procedures plus templates for designing and developing plans for vocational training based on nationally recognised products
• Nationally recognised training products
• Clients/Cohorts of learners that you can package a qualification for
• Training and assessment strategies for required training
• Session plans and learning resources that address the requirements of a training product that is nationally recognised or aligned with other recognised frameworks
• A minimum of 4 people to be learners for a face-to-face, in-person, group based training
• An additional person (can’t be one of the 4 above) to be a learner who requires 1-on-1 mentoring, doing a workplace-based training
• Students that can be assessed against at least 2 entire units of competency from a nationally recognised training package or accredited course. This must include access to assessment systems plus current and validated assessment tools, including access to a provided RPL kit
• Organisational procedures for facilitating individual and group-based vocational and work based training

If you don’t know what a lot of these are, that’s ok, you’ll just need to speak to your manager and find out if you’ll have access to everything you need. Particularly the minimum of 5 people to be learners in your practical assessments.  If not, or it just gets all too hard to find/access everything, don’t worry, we have you covered with option 2…

Out of the 2 pathways, this is the easiest!  Why?

Because our development team have spent a HUGE amount of time, energy, planning and effort to create a whole virtual RTO (called “X-Factor RTO”) for you to use. This has been over a year in the making because they have gone to great lengths to make it as close to a real-life experience as possible. Hats off to our development team here!

Everything has been created for you and is completely accessible, so you don’t have to create it, find it, or figure it out yourself (which most RTO’s expect you to do).  This is going to save you a lot of time and sanity!

We provide you with the assessment tools, all the learning resources, training and assessment strategies, and all of the VET policies and procedures you need (you can expect to come across these when you work in an actual RTO).

The assignments in our Virtual RTO are based on real life scenarios that will give you a very realistic experience of what it will be like working for an RTO as a trainer and assessor once you graduate.

And we have set up 3 workshops to make sure you’re able to complete the necessary practical assessments for the following units:

• TAEASS404 – Assess competence in an online environment.
• TAEDEL405 – Plan, organise and facilitate online learning.
• TAEASS413 – Participate in assessment validation.

Unfortunately, you can’t become a trainer without actually designing and delivering training to real people.  And you can’t become an assessor without using assessment tools and assessing real students, but as you can see, we help you do all of this.

“I Don’t Work In An RTO” – Simulated Pathway

Compared to the Actual RTO Based Workplace Pathway, here is the list of things you need to organise for this pathway (noticeably shorter?):

• A minimum of 4 people to be learners for a face-to-face, in-person, group based training
• An additional person (can’t be one of the 4 above) to be a learner who requires 1-on-1 mentoring, doing a workplace-based training

The people you choose may be family, friends and/or colleagues. You just need to record the training session and be able to upload the recording to us via your Learner Portal (you have unlimited tech support if you need help doing this part).

Note: If using family/ friends, they must be 16+ years old to be considered one of your learners.

IMPORTANT:  While we’ve done a LOT of work to make this pathway easier, make no mistake, you still have a lot of work to do because this qualification is not easy. We just haven’t made it any harder than it needs to be, and we’re one of the only RTO’s that has gone the extra mile to do this. The kicker is, you won’t even get to truly appreciate it until you’re in your own RTO and can see how our virtual RTO has really prepared you for life as a trainer and assessor!  Oh well, we know you’ll get it, once you know what we know.