A quick Python 3 script to parse available public data in order to generate a time series of current Australian RTOs.
python3 CountRTOs...turns RtoList.csv into RTO_yearly_counts.csv.
To get the raw_data/RtoList.xlsx file:
- Go to http://training.gov.au/Reporting, expand the RTO reports section, and click on RTO List.
- Select all past and present Regulatory bodies and all Registration status', tick Include Legacy Data, but leave Expire Date blank.
- View the report. This will be a list of all historical RTO's in Australia with registration start and end dates.
- Save the report as an Excel file via the icons at the top of the page (it should be about 11,000 rows).
To create the .csv file: clean up the .xlsx file by unmerging cells, save as a .csv, and then remove superfluous leading rows and empty columns.
You should now have a .csv file in a similar format to:
| RCAB | Code | Name | Start Date | End Date | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TVET | 1 | Office of the Student Identifiers Registrar | 5-Nov-14 | Current | |
| NSW VETAB | 20 | Tourism Training Australia | 1-Jan-98 | 28-May-02 | Non-Current |
| ASQA | 22 | Adelaide Training and Employment Centre Inc | 28-Oct-13 | 27-Oct-18 | Current |
| etc... |
So for any given date, if a particular RTO's start and end dates encompass that date, the RTO would have been current at that time.
The file CountRTOs.py iterates through each row checking the start and end dates, and increments a "year-counter"
for each year that particular RTO was current. This creates a list of [year]: [number of current RTOs] for each year, which
is written to an RTO_yearly_counts.csv file in the same directory.