Certificate III in Commercial Cookery

Qualifying as a chef in Australia is now more flexible than ever. This one- year full time course provides students with broad cross section of theoretical knowledge and practical skills training in fully equipped commercial kitchens, ensuring graduating students are job ready for their career as a commercial chef.

Both International and Australian domestic students can enrol in this qualification. If you are an Australian permanent resident, you will be entitled to some government subsidy for part of the cost of this course under the Priority Industry Training Funding offered by the Department of Training and Workplace Development in Western Australia.

With this qualification, students will be able to work in a variety of venues where food is prepared and served. The course includes eight subjects designed to reflect the modern kitchen skill sets required of all chefs.

Course subjects include planning, organising, preparing and presenting food such as appetisers, stocks, meats, seafood and poultry, desserts and pastries, following health and safety procedures, maintaining kitchen premises, developing hospitality industry knowledge, developing cost effective menus and preparing food according to dietary and cultural needs.

Students are required to do hands-on practical training in Australian Professional Skills Institute's fully operational commercial training kitchens. At the end of theory and practical training, all students are required to undertake compulsory workplace training throughout the course. Workplace training is an integral part of the training and assessment for this qualification. All students are required to work in an appropriate hospitality establishment such as restaurants, hotels, clubs, pubs, cafes, cafeterias and coffee shops as a trainee chef.

RPL is available to anyone who has experience working in a commercial kitchen.

RPL:

• provides an alternative pathway to achieving a qualification without course attendance
• is a consultative process between with the candidate and the assessor to determine whether the candidate has acquired the requisite learning, skills and knowledge to demonstrate that they have achieved the required learning outcomes or performance criteria of the course or qualification, for which the candidate is seeking
• identifies where appropriate additional learning experiences or training gaps are needed to achieve the course or qualification
• is the conduct of an assessment to confirm competency.

APSI has developed a process that promotes holistic and task-based assessment. It focuses on relating assessment activities to actual job tasks. The intention of this model is to streamline and simplify the process of recognising competency.

Prior to RPL, information is provided to the candidate on the assessment process. Specific advice is given to each candidate on how they can demonstrate their competence and what documentary evidence is required to support their application. Each industry has unique documents that can provide evidence of experience and competence.

The candidate is required to provide adequate information prior to, throughout and after a training and assessment experience. The assessor, in this process, needs to be fully aware of the needs of the candidate and help them identify relevant workplace personnel who can confirm the candidate's competency.

The focus of the APSI streamlined holistic assessment process is to focus on demonstrated skills and knowledge and not to rely purely on documentary evidence as the main source of evidence.

Some examples of documentary evidence that can support the process include:

• licences such as First Aid, RSA
• CV or work history with details of job role and responsibilities
• previous qualifications from overseas and Australia
• certificates and records of results or assessments completed with other RTO's
• photographs of work undertaken
• samples of related project work
• diaries of tasks performed
• task sheets/job sheets/logbooks
• site training records
• pay slips / employment contracts / job descriptions
• memberships of relevant professional associations
• references/letters/third party reports from previous employers/supervisors
• industry awards
• performance appraisals