RPL Report Writing for the ACS Skills Assessment

The ACS requires an RPL where your qualification does not meet the ICT requirement for your nominated occupation — typically a non-ICT degree, or an ICT-minor degree that is not closely related. If your degree is an ICT major closely related to the occupation, you do not write an RPL at all; you submit a standard skills application.

Get this wrong in either direction and you lose the fee. Our ACS guide sets out the qualification categories and the corresponding experience deductions.

Key Areas of Knowledge. You demonstrate knowledge across the ACS Core Body of Knowledge — essential ICT knowledge such as ICT professional practice, ethics, and the technology areas relevant to your occupation, plus general ICT knowledge areas including hardware and software fundamentals, data and information management, networking, systems development and project management.

Two project reports. Each describes an ICT project you worked on — one completed within the last three years, one within the last five — and shows how you applied the knowledge areas in practice. They must be distinct projects, written in the first person.

This trips up applicants who research "Australian skills assessment" generically. A CDR is an Engineers Australia document assessed against Stage 1 engineering competencies. An RPL is an ACS document assessed against the Core Body of Knowledge. The structures, the assessors and the standards are entirely different, and submitting one to the other body wastes the fee and the months.