That's not a scam. It's a scope problem, and it's one the sector doesn't talk about clearly enough. High intensity training isn't one thing. It's four distinct things, delivered by different people, and almost nobody selling training tells you which one you're getting.
A practical way to see the landscape, not an NDIS category
Worth saying plainly before anything else: the four tiers below are a practical way of organising the training landscape, not a structure the NDIS itself defines. The labels don't appear anywhere in the skills descriptors. What they're built from is real: the descriptors describe two genuine layers of training, general knowledge and participant-specific training, each of which involves both learning and a form of confirmation that the learning landed. Splitting that into four gives you a clean way to check what any given course, or any given provider process, is actually covering.
Page 7 of the descriptors makes the two-layer split explicit: "In addition to general training in the knowledge expected to deliver complex bowel care, workers will be trained in the specific needs of each participant they support including the appropriate use of equipment." General training, then person-specific training. That sentence, repeated in substance across every descriptor, is where all four tiers come from.
The four, laid out
| Tier | What it is | Who does it |
|---|---|---|
| 1A | General theory, delivered online | A training provider, such as CORA |
| 1B | Competency assessment on that general theory | Your service's clinician or qualified assessor |
| 2B | Participant-specific training, built from the actual care plan | Your service, or the practitioner who owns that plan |
| 2C | Competency assessment against that specific care plan | Your service's qualified assessor |
Read across the row that matters most: 1A is knowledge. 1B, 2B and 2C are all, in different ways, about confirming a specific worker can actually do the thing for a specific person. No online course, from anyone, performs 1B, 2B or 2C. Those three require a person watching, assessing or building content around an actual care plan that only your service holds.
Where CORA sits, and where it doesn't
CORA measures and evidences capability. It does not certify competence.
We're building toward tier 1A: general theory, online, teaching the ground the eight high intensity support skills descriptors have in common. That course is written and currently in clinical review. We're not giving it a launch date here, because we'd rather it ship when it's actually ready than when a page like this implies it should be.
We do not deliver 1B, 2B or 2C, and we won't claim to. Those require a qualified person, working from a specific participant's plan, watching or assessing a specific worker. No platform can do that from a screen, and any training provider who tells you an online module satisfies a skills descriptor requirement is telling you something the document itself doesn't support.
What CORA can do, once your service has run 1B or 2C through a qualified assessor, is hold the record of it. Support Observations lets your service log a practitioner-led or assessor-led session against a worker's file, alongside their 1A course completion, so the evidence sits in one place instead of scattered across a clinician's notes and a training spreadsheet. That's a record-keeping claim, not a competency claim. We hold the evidence. Your assessor makes the call.
Why naming your tier matters more than any vendor's marketing copy
"High intensity training" is used, constantly, to describe all four tiers at once, which is exactly how a provider ends up thinking one purchase covers the lot. It's a far more useful habit, for your own training plan and for anyone selling into it, to ask one direct question of every course or process: which tier is this, specifically.
A vendor who can answer that in one sentence, and who's honest about which tiers they don't touch, is telling you something true about scope. A vendor who talks about "high intensity training" as a single undifferentiated thing, with no distinction between the theory and the assessment, is the one worth a second, harder look.
What this means when you're evaluating a training option
Three questions worth asking any high intensity course before you buy it, including ours:
1. Does this teach general knowledge (1A), or does it claim to assess a specific worker's competency (1B or 2C)? If it claims the second, ask exactly how, given no clinician or assessor from your service was involved in building or watching it. 2. Does it clearly say the participant-specific layer (2B) and the competency assessment (2C) still sit with your service? If a course is silent on this, that silence is doing work you should notice. 3. Does it give you somewhere to hold the record once your practitioner has actually run 1B or 2C? A course that only tracks its own completion leaves the other three tiers invisible in your evidence pack, even after you've genuinely done them.
Frequently asked questions
What are the four tiers of NDIS high intensity training?
This is a practical framework, not an NDIS-defined scheme. It splits training into general theory (1A), competency assessment on that theory (1B), participant-specific training built from the care plan (2B), and competency assessment against that specific plan (2C).
Can an online course satisfy tier 1B or 2C?
No. Both are forms of competency assessment, and both require a qualified person watching or assessing a specific worker against a specific participant's needs. That can't happen inside a self-paced online module.
Does CORA assess high intensity competency?
No. CORA measures and evidences capability, it does not certify competence. Our position is tier 1A, general theory delivered online. Competency assessment, whether generic (1B) or participant-specific (2C), sits with your service's qualified assessor.
Can CORA record training my practitioner already delivered?
Yes, through Support Observations, once a qualified person has actually delivered or assessed it. CORA holds the record. It doesn't perform the assessment or decide the outcome, that stays with the person who did the assessing.
Is CORA's high intensity foundation course available now?
It's written and currently in clinical review. We haven't set a launch date, and we'd rather tell you that plainly than imply a timeline we can't guarantee.
This guide is general information for NDIS providers, not legal or compliance advice. Always check the current requirements directly with the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission, because the detail does change. Sourced directly from NDIS Practice Standards: High intensity support skills descriptors, Guidance for NDIS providers and auditors, November 2022, Version 3, NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission. The four-tier framework is CORA's own description of the training landscape, not NDIS terminology.
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