VET and work placement governance
The placement is the student's to run.
Students find their own employer, complete their own safety training and watch their own paperwork move. The coordinator keeps every placement in view without assembling the picture by hand.
Emailed DOCX arrangement forms, chasing employer signatures, and coordinator spreadsheets.
What it has done so far
Real counts from the school that runs it, not a projection.
Six months in, and none of these are samples.
- 349
- placements run
- 152
- students, Years 10 to 12
- 231
- employers
- 132
- workplace visits logged
Counted from the app's own records since February 2026, when the school it was built in moved its placement round off paper. Not a pilot, not a demonstration set — the arrangement forms, the signatures and the visit records above came out of placements that actually happened.
Why this exists
The gap between digitising a document and running a round.
A signed form is not a ready placement.
Turning the arrangement form into something digital is the right first move, and any school still emailing a DOCX around should make it. But the form is one artefact produced at the end of a process that runs for weeks and involves five people, four of whom have to sign. Finish the document and you have finished the last five minutes.
The work that fills a term sits earlier than the form: which employer said yes, whether the parent replied, whether the safety training is done, whether anyone has visited. Spread across a spreadsheet, an inbox and a memory, that picture takes an afternoon to assemble and is out of date by the time it is finished. The problem is where the information lives, not the person keeping track of it.
Work Placement manages the round rather than the document. Volume is why it matters now: structured workplace learning is compulsory in some VCE VET programs, and where a student takes it for credit each unit carries eighty hours in the workplace alongside twenty in class. A cohort that once did a single week in Year 10 is placed through the year.
- The whole round, not just the arrangement form — search, consent, readiness, visits and sign-off.
- Arrangement forms populate from data the school already holds, rather than being rekeyed.
- Employers sign from an email link. An account is there for the ones who want it, not required of the ones who do not.
- Every signature captured before the placement starts, which is the rule.
- Students submit the employer they found themselves, which is how most placements really begin.
- Parents are asked once, clearly, and chased only if they have not replied.
Signing takes one link and four minutes.
An employer who has agreed to take a student gets a link in an email. They confirm the supervisor, the address and the hours, tick the declarations they are making, and sign.
Nothing to install, no password to remember, and no sign-up unless they want one — which is the only version of this that works for a business hosting one student for one week a year. The signed arrangement goes back to the school on its own, and the placement moves to the next thing it is waiting on.
Employers who take students often do keep an account, and get their own details, insurance and declarations in one place — updated once a year rather than once a student.
Names, addresses and figures shown here are invented.
Work Placement by Sprout
End-to-end governance for VET, SWL and work experience placements.
What it does.
Employers sign from an email link
Placement agreements and evaluations are signed through a secure one-click link, with no account required. Employers who host students regularly keep a standing profile instead — their own details, insurance and declarations updated once a year rather than once a student, and every placement they have taken in one view.
Government forms, auto-filled
Official state arrangement forms and PDF certificates populate straight from placement data, instead of being rekeyed.
Attendance, visits and student submissions
Attendance is recorded per student for each placement and signed off by the employer, so the days a student actually attended are evidenced rather than remembered. Teachers log visit observations from a phone at the workplace, and students submit their own employer and CV.
Central coordinator view
Filtering, bulk approval queues, visit delegation and employer management in one place, rather than four.
Knowing where every placement stood used to mean an afternoon across a spreadsheet and an inbox. Now it is one screen, and it is current.
The coordinator board
One screen, and what each placement is waiting on.
Every placement, and exactly what is blocking it.
The board does not rank or score anyone. It shows what the school already knows about each placement alongside what is still outstanding, so the placements that need attention this week are visible without anyone assembling the picture by hand.
| Student | Employer | Dates | Waiting on |
|---|---|---|---|
| Year 10 · A. Nguyen | Riverbend Veterinary | 14–18 Jul | Ready |
| Year 10 · J. Patel | Sunbury Auto Electrics | 14–18 Jul | Parent consent outstanding |
| Year 11 · M. O'Brien | Macedon Ranges Council | 21–25 Jul | Insurance expired |
| Year 10 · S. Ali | Bakers Lane Childcare | 21–25 Jul | Ready |
| Year 11 · T. Wu | Not yet found | — | No placement |
One workflow, four people
The same placement, seen from each side.
A placement needs four people. Each one gets their own way in.
Most placement software is built for the coordinator and leaves everyone else to cope with whatever it produces. The student, the parent and the employer each have a part to play, so each gets a path suited to what they actually have: a phone, a few minutes, and no system to learn.
The student owns the next step.
- Sees the placements open to them, filtered to what their year level and course actually allow.
- Records the employer they have found themselves, which is how most placements really begin.
- Uploads the signed forms from their phone, at the kitchen table, without a printer.
- Gets told what is still outstanding, in one sentence, until nothing is.
What it discharges
Sourced from the Department's own policy, not from us.
The obligations, and where each one lands.
These are requirements on Victorian schools under the Department's structured workplace learning and work experience policies. Every row is something a coordinator is already accountable for, and the right-hand column is what the app does about it.
- The student is within the age range for the arrangement. Work experience in Victoria is for students between 14 and 21.
- Checked against the student record when the placement is created, so an ineligible placement is caught at submission rather than the week before it starts.
- The employer holds current WorkCover cover. Non-government schools arrange their own student cover — the Department's does not extend to them.
- Insurance details and expiry sit on the employer record rather than being re-entered per placement, so one lapsed policy shows against every placement that depends on it, before anybody travels.
- The arrangement form is signed by the employer, the student, the parent or carer where the student is under 18, and the principal or nominated person — all of it before the placement commences.
- Every signature is collected in sequence against the placement, and the board shows which one is outstanding. A placement cannot read as ready while a signature is missing.
- A copy of the signed form goes to each party; the principal or nominated person keeps the original.
- Distribution happens on signature rather than as a separate job someone has to remember.
- The student has satisfactorily completed OHS training — safe@work, A Job Well Done, or the WHS unit of competency in their VET program.
- Recorded against the student and checked as part of readiness, so it is not discovered at the last minute.
- A Travel and Accommodation form where the student travels with the employer or stays away from home.
- Raised automatically when a placement is flagged as away-from-home, rather than depending on someone noticing.
- The school's child safety obligations follow the student to the workplace. Supervisor details, workplace suitability and any incident have to be recorded.
- Supervisor name and contact, the workplace check and any incident report are held on the placement record, so the trail exists before anyone asks for it.
- The school monitors the student during the placement — contact and, where required, a workplace visit — and keeps a record of it.
- Visits are delegated, logged from a phone at the workplace, and attached to the placement. Coordinator contact travels with the student on their own device for the days they are there.
- Work experience students in Victoria are paid a nominal amount by the employer — $5 a day — while structured workplace learning is unpaid. The two arrangements are not interchangeable.
- The arrangement type is chosen when the placement is created and the paperwork follows from it, so the two do not get filled in as though they were the same thing.
Obligations summarised from the Department of Education's Policy and Advisory Library (Structured Workplace Learning and Work Experience, Ministerial Orders 1412 and 1413). Confirm the current wording against the PAL — it is the authority, not this page.
Before you ask
Including the one where the answer might be no.
The questions that come up first.
How does this compare with the Department's Work-Based Learning App?
They solve different parts of the problem. The WBL App produces the arrangement form digitally and does that job properly. Work Placement runs the round the form comes out of — the employer search, parent consent, OHS readiness, the workplace visits, and the board that tells you which placements will not be ready. If the form is the only part that takes your time, you may not need us. If you are placing a VM cohort across the whole year, the round is where the work is, and the round is what this is built for.
Does this replace our SIS?
No. It reads the student record your school already keeps and writes placement outcomes back to it, so whatever you run stays where it is and nobody maintains a second list of students.
Our employers are small businesses. Will they actually use it?
Nothing is required of them. A link arrives by email, they read what they are agreeing to, and they sign — no sign-up, no password, nothing to install, which is the only version that works for a business hosting one student for one week. Employers who take students often can create an account and see all of their placements together, but that is their choice rather than a condition of helping.
What happens to our data if we stop?
You export it and we delete ours. Placement records are school records; they are not ours to hold onto, and nothing about the trial or the product is designed to make leaving hard.
Who actually built this?
It was built inside an operating Victorian secondary college, for its own coordinator, because the paper process was not surviving the volume. It has run against real placement rounds before it was offered to anyone else.
Open for trial
A real placement round, not a sandbox.
Work Placement is open for trial now.
We are taking Victorian secondary colleges onto Work Placement a few at a time, at the pace we can set each one up properly. There is no closing date and no countdown — we would rather do a handful well than a hundred badly. It is a paid pilot rather than a free trial: $500 plus GST covers your whole school for twelve months, and it buys our time as much as the software. You run it on real placements, with your own students and your own employers, and we set it up with you rather than handing over a login and wishing you luck.
- What you run it on
- Real placements, with your own students and employers — not a sandbox with sample data.
- What we do
- We configure it with your coordinator, import your existing placements, and stay on hand across the twelve months.
- What it costs
- $500 per school, plus GST, for twelve months — one invoice, no card, and nothing that renews on its own. Pricing after the twelve months is quoted per school against your enrolment.
- Who it is for
- Victorian non-government secondary colleges. Government schools have the Department's Work-Based Learning App at no cost, and if the arrangement form is the only part taking your time, use that instead.
- What happens after
- You keep your data either way. If it is not working for you, you walk away and nothing is stranded.
Shared platform
The part that makes the suite worth more than the app.
One student record, shared across the suite.
Work Placement runs on the same student record, the same sign-in and the same permission model as every other Sprout app. Staff do not maintain a second list of people, and a change made once is a change everywhere.
It connects to:
- Student information systems
- Learning management systems
- Single sign-on providers
Talk to us
The useful first conversation is about what you already run.
Ask about the trial.
Work Placement is open for trial now. Tell us when your next placement round is and we will come back to you about fitting it in.