Making Professional Development Count

If you are on an executive leadership team or a school board at a Western Australian independent school, you already know the intense pressure that comes with a Non-Government School Registration (NGSR) review.

When mapping out your annual school calendar, a question that pops up constantly is: “Do mandatory safety qualifications like First Aid, Bronze Medallion, and OHS count as staff professional development under the WA Registration Standards?”

The short answer is yes, absolutely.

However, they don't all sit in the same folder. When a Department of Education auditor walks through your doors, they look at your compliance training and your staff development through two completely different lenses.

Here is exactly how to structure your training records to satisfy both your school registration audit and your teachers' individual registration requirements.

Compliance Mandates vs The Teaching Standards

From an auditing perspective, certain safety courses are non-negotiable operational requirements. They aren't "optional extra" professional learning, but they absolutely count toward proving your workforce is capable and safe.

First Aid, Asthma, and Anaphylaxis

Under Standard 4 (Staff) and Standard 7 (Critical & Emergency Incidents), your school must maintain a contemporaneous record proving an adequate number of staff hold current, approved first aid certificates. If your school has an Early Childhood setting (Pre-K and Kindergarten), the rules are strict, at least one staff member with current, approved First Aid, Asthma, and Anaphylaxis qualifications must be physically present on the floor at all times children are there.

Fire Warden & Safety Training

Standard 7 requires schools to actively implement emergency management procedures. To satisfy an auditor, you must show evidence that staff have been trained in evacuation protocols, fire panels, and warden duties. Your best evidence path here is keeping a clean logbook of regular trial evacuations paired with your staff training certificates.

Bronze Medallion (Water Safety)

This sits squarely under Section 4 of the Registration Guide (Levels of Care / Excursions). If your school runs swimming carnivals, beach excursions, or camps near open water, your duty of care mandates strict supervisor to student ratios. A current Bronze Medallion or Surf Rescue certificate is the standard proof required to show that you have assessed and mitigated aquatic risks.

OHS / WHS Training

It is also a requirement under the standards school boards and executives must prove they are actively monitoring institutional risk. Formal training certificates for your elected Health and Safety Representatives (HSRs), or executive masterclasses on managing workplace psychosocial hazards, serve as direct evidence of compliance.

Governing Body PD Requirements

It isn't just your classroom teachers and ground staff who require continuous professional learning. Under the Registration Standards for Non-Government Schools (WA), the Department of Education places heavy emphasis on Board Professional Development. When an independent school fails a registration audit, it is rarely because a teacher missed a pedagogy seminar, it is almost always because the governing body cannot prove they understand their statutory risks. To clear a registration review, your board minutes, induction packs, and training logs must prove that directors actively undergo structured learning in two critical operational areas.

1. Child Safe Governance & The Reportable Conduct Scheme

The registration standards explicitly state that learning opportunities regarding child abuse prevention, grooming indicators, and the WA Reportable Conduct Scheme must be provided to governing body members at regular intervals, not just school staff. Because the school board is the ultimate legal employer, auditors expect directors to understand exactly how this system operates at a leadership level.

Your governance logs must demonstrate that the board knows how to navigate the Reportable Conduct Scheme, including the mandatory requirement to notify the Ombudsman Western Australia within 7 working days of becoming aware of a reportable allegation. Crucially, your directors must show they know how to independently handle a reportable conduct allegation if it ever involves the Principal. In these sensitive scenarios, the board must understand its legal duty to bypass internal management, step in as the "head of the organisation," and directly oversee the independent investigation.

Your board can easily meet these heavy child safety governance requirements for free using official public infrastructure:

• WACOSS Child Safe Project: Run in partnership with the WA Ombudsman, their Governing for Child Safe Organisations On-Demand Training provides recorded webinars mapping out the exact steps a board must take during an executive staff investigation.

• Australian Human Rights Commission: Their Free Child Safe Organisations eLearning Modules offer self-paced modules that perfectly unpack the National Principles for onboarding new directors.

2. Financial Viability, Asset Protection & Legal Structures

Under Standard 11, board members must undergo regular briefings to ensure they maintain the collective financial and legal literacy required to govern a school responsibly. An auditor will cross reference your board minutes and skills matrices to verify that directors are actively tracking three specific pillars: legal structure compliance (such as the Associations Incorporation Act 2015), long-term financial health (including enrolment driven cash flow monitoring), and federal ACNC charity mandates.

Your directors can completely satisfy these heavy financial governance benchmarks without touching the school's operational budget by utilising the ACNC Governing Charities Program. This is a completely free, self paced online training platform created directly by the federal charity regulator.

• The Course: The ACNC Governing Charities Online Learning Hub features highly targeted short modules covering The Duties of a Board Member, Financial Reporting, and Fraud Prevention. Each module takes only 1 to 2 hours, and directors can immediately download a formal Certificate of Completion to drop straight into your school's registration audit folder as irrefutable evidence of ongoing compliance.

Ultimately, an auditor will expect to see a live Board Skills Matrix and an annual governance training register showing that your directors are actively keeping up with these mandatory duties.

Unlocking the TRBWA 100 Hour Rule

While the school uses these courses to tick off its employer obligations, your teachers can also use them to count toward their individual registration renewals.

To maintain Full Registration with the Teacher Registration Board of Western Australia (TRBWA), every teacher must log a minimum of 100 professional learning hours every 5 years. The TRBWA allows safety, first aid, and OHS training to be included in this log, provided the teacher can explicitly link the activity back to the Australian Professional Standards for Teaching.

When your staff complete these courses during your pupil free days, remind them to log them under these specific standards:

• Standard 4.4 (Maintain Student Safety): First aid, anaphylaxis, bronze medallion, and fire warden training fit perfectly here.

• Standard 7.2 (Understand and Comply with Legislative Requirements): OHS/WHS briefings, psychosocial hazard workshops, and mandatory reporting updates fit squarely under this standard.

The Logging Trick for Your Staff

To ensure these hours easily pass a TRBWA audit, teachers should avoid vague entries like "Attended First Aid (8 hours)." Instead, encourage them to write a clear, reflective entry in their logbook e.g.: Activity: Applied First Aid & Anaphylaxis Certification Standard Addressed: Standard 4.4 (Maintain Student Safety) Reflection: Updated critical emergency response skills to ensure student physical safety during classroom activities, local excursions, and playground duty, in alignment with school duty of care policies.

How Many PD Days Are Actually Required?

Another common myth is that there is a legally mandated number of professional development days required by the Registration Standards. There isn't.

Instead, the calendar structure is determined by public school frameworks and your school's individual Enterprise Bargaining Agreements (EBAs). Most independent schools mirror the WA public system benchmark, which schedules 6 school development (pupil free) days per year (typically three before Term 1 commences, and the rest distributed across the remaining terms).

From a registration review perspective, an NGSR auditor will not count the number of pupil free days on your calendar. They simply look for the competency and compliance data reports generated by your staff and board training tracking.

The Bottom Line

Using your scheduled staff development days to complete whole-school compliance certifications is an incredibly efficient use of time. It allows you to protect your school's operational budget, keep your workforce legally compliant under WA Registration Standards, ensure your Board is meeting its governance duties, and simultaneously help your teaching staff knock out their individual professional registration hours all at once.