The short answer
In short: the NDIS does not name a refresher interval for training. Not annually, not every two years, not at all. Across the Practice Standards, the Rules and the Commission's own guidance, refresher training is referred to without a period attached. Every cadence your organisation runs is your determination, and your job is to be able to explain it.
This surprises people, because "annual refresher" is repeated so often in the sector that it reads like a rule. We went looking for the rule. It is not there.
What we did find is that most of the intervals providers quote are real, and they come from somewhere else entirely: the training product, the clearance, or the clinical body. Confusing those with an NDIS requirement is how providers end up over-training in one area and under-evidencing in another.
What we checked, and what we found
We swept the NDIS Practice Standards, the associated Rules, the Commission's provider and worker guidance, the Workforce Capability Framework and the High Intensity Support Skills Descriptors, along with the Commission's published practice material. Thirty five sources.
Three findings.
One. Refresher training is named, and never timed. The concept appears, as something providers are expected to do. No source we read attaches a period to it.
Two. The one place "annually" appears in this neighbourhood is not about training. It sits in the High Intensity Support Skills Descriptors, and it is a recommendation about reviewing a worker's competency, which is a different act from re-running a course. A provider who schedules an annual module and calls it done has answered a question nobody asked.
Three. The intervals everyone quotes are mostly correct and mostly not NDIS. See the table below.
Where the intervals actually come from
These are the cadences providers most often describe as NDIS requirements. Most are genuine obligations. Almost none of them originate with the NDIS.
| What | Typical interval | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| NDIS Worker Screening Check | 5 years | The screening scheme itself, with continuous monitoring in between. A clearance, not training. |
| CPR | Commonly annual | The training product and the resuscitation guidance behind it, not the NDIS. |
| First aid | Commonly 3 years | Same. A unit currency convention, not an NDIS rule. |
| Manual handling, infection control, incident management | Often annual, by convention | The provider's own determination. No NDIS interval exists for these. |
| High intensity competency review | Annual, recommended | The High Intensity Support Skills Descriptors, and it concerns competency review rather than repeating a course. |
| NDIS Worker Orientation Module | No expiry set | Published by the Commission as an induction resource. |
Treat any source telling you the NDIS requires annual refresher training as repeating sector folklore. It is extremely common, including in AI generated answers, and it is still not in the instrument.
What an auditor actually asks
Not "is it annual". The questions that come up are closer to these.
- What cadence have you set, for which training, and for which roles?
- Why that cadence? What informed it?
- Are you meeting it? Show me.
- What happens when somebody falls behind it?
That is a reasoned position plus evidence that you follow it. A provider running eighteen months on a defensible basis, meeting it consistently and acting on overdue, is in a stronger position than one claiming annual and missing it.
Which reframes the work. The task is not finding the right number. It is writing down the number you chose, the reason, and the record that shows you hold to it.
How to set a cadence you can defend
Start from risk, not from the calendar. What goes wrong if this skill decays, and how quickly? Medication and manual handling decay differently from a policy acknowledgement.
Separate the three things. A course completion, a clearance expiry, and a competency observation are not the same object and do not share a clock. Most confusion in this area is these three being run as one.
Write the reason next to the interval. One line. It is the difference between a schedule and a position.
Set it per role, not per organisation. A worker delivering high intensity supports and a worker doing community access do not need the same cycle, and pretending otherwise costs you money in one direction and exposure in the other.
Then make it visible. A cadence nobody can see is a cadence nobody meets. Expiry tracking is covered here, and what an auditor samples is here.
How to track the observed competency layer
In short: the annual review in the Descriptors is about competency, and a competency is observed rather than completed. So the record is a different shape from a training record. It is four fields and a document, and the field most providers leave empty is the one an auditor asks about first.
If you run high intensity supports, this is the layer that decides whether your annual cycle means anything.
| What the record holds | Why it is asked for |
|---|---|
| What was observed | The actual task on a real shift, not a course title. "Completed the module" is not an observation. |
| Who observed it | A named person. Not the team, not the organisation. |
| What qualified them to observe | The field most often left empty, and the one that catches providers out. For high intensity supports the assessment is clinician led, so the observer's own credential is part of the evidence. |
| Date observed, and next due | Two dates. A single date with nothing after it records an event rather than a cycle, and a cycle is what the annual recommendation describes. |
| The signed clinician form | Attached and reproducible in full, rather than summarised into a tick in a spreadsheet. |
Two practical points. The observer's qualification belongs on the record, not in somebody's memory, because the person who can vouch for it may have left by the time you are audited. And the next due date is what turns this into a cycle you can report on, which is the difference between saying you review annually and showing it.
In CORA this is practice observation recorded on shift with ratings, supervision sessions with sign-off, and a competency record carrying all five, with the clinician form attached. The finding itself stays with your qualified assessor, which is where the Practice Standards place it. The required versus recommended distinction is set out here.
What this needs from a platform, and why we built CORA this way
If this is the problem you came here with
Everything above lands on one requirement: you need to show the cadence you set, and the evidence that you held to it. That is a record keeping job, and it is the job CORA does.
You set the cadence, not us. The due window per course and the warning window on each credential at 7, 14, 30, 60 or 90 days are yours. A platform that shipped a default annual cycle would be asserting a rule that does not exist, and you would be the one answering for it at audit.
Then CORA does the part that actually fails. Due, overdue and renewal reminders go out automatically. Each worker gets one email listing everything they owe rather than one per course. Admins get a weekly digest on a weekday they choose. Upload a certificate and CORA reads the expiry printed on it. Eight registers export as CSV when an auditor asks.
And it holds the competency layer separately, because an observation is not a completion: practice observation on shift with ratings, supervision sign-off, and a record carrying the observer, what qualified them, and the next due date, with the clinician form attached in full.
That combination is why providers who care about defending their cadence rather than just running one choose CORA. The courses are ours too, 90+ written for NDIS frontline support work and mapped to the Practice Standards and the Workforce Capability Framework, so the training and the record are not two systems disagreeing with each other.
See it with your own cadence, or read the pricing, published in full from a 15 seat band.
Sources
- NDIS Practice Standards, NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission
- NDIS Workforce Capability Framework, NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission
- High Intensity Support Skills Descriptors, NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission
- NDIS Worker Screening, NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission
- Required versus recommended: the high intensity competency review, CORA
General information for NDIS providers, not legal or compliance advice. Requirements change; check current detail with the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission.