NDIS Practice Standards modules: all nine, what each covers, and what your auditor asks you to prove

Written by the Provider360 team. Provider360 is Australia’s leading done-for-you NDIS registration and compliance solution, supporting 3,000+ disability service providers nationally. We build the documentation sets these modules are audited against, so we see week to week which evidence auditors accept and which they send back.

What are the NDIS Practice Standards modules?

A Practice Standards module is a grouped set of quality standards that an approved quality auditor assesses you against. Each module is a Schedule to the National Disability Insurance Scheme (Provider Registration and Practice Standards) Rules 2018, and there are nine of them.

The Commission groups the nine three ways. The Core Module applies to registered providers delivering high-risk supports. Seven supplementary modules apply depending on what you deliver: Modules 1, 2, 2A, 3, 4, 5 and 5A. The Verification Module, which the Rules title Module 6, applies to providers delivering low-risk, low-complexity supports. Supported independent living is the seventh entry on the Commission’s supplementary list, and the newest.

Why every module is written across two instruments

Each module exists in two places, and the gap between them is where most audit preparation goes wrong.

The outcomes, meaning what has to be true in your business, sit in the Rules as the Schedules. The quality indicators are what you have to show an auditor, and they sit in a separate instrument: the National Disability Insurance Scheme (Quality Indicators for NDIS Practice Standards) Guidelines 2018, whose Parts mirror the Rules’ Schedules one for one.

The indicators are not optional guidance. The Rules say the quality indicators “must be taken into account” in assessing whether an applicant meets the NDIS Practice Standards and whether a registered provider is complying with them.

In one sentence: the Rules say what must be true, the Guidelines say what you must produce, and the auditor works from the second one.

Where do the NDIS Practice Standards modules come from in law?

Two Commonwealth instruments, both current as at 1 July 2026.

The modules themselves are set out in the National Disability Insurance Scheme (Provider Registration and Practice Standards) Rules 2018. That is where every module’s outcomes sit, the Verification Module included: the Rules name it “Module 6: Verification” and treat it as a module in the same sense as the other eight, not as a lighter alternative to them.

The evidence sits in a second instrument, the National Disability Insurance Scheme (Quality Indicators for NDIS Practice Standards) Guidelines 2018. It runs in the same order as the Rules, carrying one set of quality indicators for every module.

What the Rules actually do. They set out which modules you are assessed against when you apply to register, and the same modules govern staying registered, so the modules are not a one-off entrance exam. They fix the assessment method for each class of supports, certification or verification. You do not pick the method; the Rules do. And the quality indicators must be taken into account both when you are assessed as an applicant and when your compliance is reviewed later.

Which NDIS Practice Standards modules apply to me?

Your modules are not a choice. For every class of supports you can register for, the Rules list the modules you must be assessed against and the method used to assess them. Register for a class of supports and its modules attach automatically.

The rule at module level, class by class:

• If you register for high intensity daily personal activities → the Core Module and Module 1, by certification.
• If you register for specialist positive behaviour support → the Core Module and Module 2, by certification.
• If you register for early intervention supports for early childhood → the Core Module and Module 3, by certification.
• If you register for specialised support coordination → the Core Module and Module 4, by certification.
• If you register for specialist disability accommodation only → Module 5 on its own, by certification, with no Core Module.
• If you register for specialist disability accommodation plus any other class of supports → the Core Module and Module 5, by certification.
• If you register for assistance with supported independent living → the Core Module and Module 5A, by certification.
• If every class you register for is a verification class, such as accommodation and tenancy assistance, home modifications or assistance animals → the Verification Module, by verification.
• If you register for other certification classes on their own, such as assistance with daily personal activities, specialised supported employment or providing an NDIS digital platform service → the Core Module, by certification.

Which registration groups sit inside each class of supports is a separate question, and this page does not answer it. The 38-group table, with the audit pathway and module set for every group, is on our NDIS registration groups page.

When does Module 2A apply to you?

Module 2A applies when a regulated restrictive practice is used, or may be used, in delivering your supports. The Rules put it in almost the same words: “the use, or possible use, of a regulated restrictive practice in providing the supports”.

That makes Module 2A a question about what happens in your service, not about which class of supports you registered for. It is a module like the other eight: you are audited against its standards by certification, it sits on top of whatever else applies to you, and the same trigger governs staying registered as well as getting registered.

So the practical check is not on your registration certificate. It is on your practice. If your team uses, or might use, a regulated restrictive practice, Module 2A is part of your audit scope.

What is in each of the nine modules?

Nine modules, 70 standards. The Schedule number is where the outcomes sit in the Rules; the Part number is where the matching quality indicators sit in the Guidelines.

What does each module actually ask you to prove?

The outcomes tell you what has to be true. The quality indicators tell you what the auditor will look at, and reading them is the fastest way to see why documentation on its own does not carry an audit.

Take the Verification Module, the one most providers assume is a paperwork exercise. Its published quality indicators include:

• “Records of worker identity, right to work, pre-employment checks, qualifications and/or experience are maintained.”
• “Workers complete mandatory NDIS orientation module and records of continuing professional development are maintained.”
• “Each worker is trained, and has refresher training, in infection prevention and control standard precautions including hand hygiene practices, respiratory hygiene and cough etiquette.”
• “Each worker who provides supports directly to participants is trained, and has refresher training, in the use of PPE.”
• “PPE is available to each worker, and each participant, who requires it.”
• “Risk assessments are regularly undertaken…”

Every one of those is a maintained record, a completed training, or a thing physically present on the day of the audit. Not one is satisfied by a policy document.

Module 5A makes the same point through its structure. The Commission publishes an Evidence Guide for that module as an evidence matrix, mapping each item of evidence to the standards it satisfies and pairing it with reflective questions for providers and workers. It also publishes reflective questions for participants, which means the auditor may put the question to the person receiving your supports rather than to you.

What we see. Our pre-audit evidence review catches an average of 16 gaps before the auditor does, and the pattern repeats: the policy exists, the register behind it is empty.

The volume of evidence also varies sharply by module. A Module 4 set runs to 15 or more documents; Module 1 runs to 45 or more; the complete set covering the Core Module and every supplementary module including Module 5A runs past 320. Scope, not effort, is what makes one provider’s preparation roughly three times the size of another’s, and that is before the full module range is counted.

Do I need the Core Module as well as my supplementary module?

Yes, in nearly every case. It is one of the rules our team is asked to confirm most often, because it does not read the way providers expect.

For specialist positive behaviour support, the Rules attach both the Core Module and Module 2, assessed by certification. The same pairing runs through Modules 1, 3, 4 and 5A, and through specialist disability accommodation delivered alongside any other class of supports. A supplementary module adds standards to the Core Module. It does not stand in for them.

The version we hear most is from behaviour support providers whose practitioners are already deemed suitable by the Commission. Practitioner suitability is a separate assessment and it does not take the Core Module out of your audit scope.

The one exception in the table is specialist disability accommodation registered on its own, which takes Module 5 alone. Add any other class of supports and the Core Module comes back.

Is having the policy enough?

No. Policies must be implemented, not just available, and auditors verify implementation through evidence of operational use: training logs, completed forms and registers, and staff who can explain the procedures.

That is not our reading of the standards. It is what the indicators say. The Verification Module asks whether records “are maintained”, whether workers have had “refresher training”, whether PPE “is available”, and whether risk assessments “are regularly undertaken”. Each of those is a question about behaviour over time, and a document with a version number on it answers none of them.

Staff interviews are one of the ways this gets tested. If your team cannot explain the procedure they are meant to follow, the folder does not rescue the finding.

What changed for SIL providers on 1 July 2026?

Module 5A, the supported independent living module, commenced. The Commission states that supported independent living providers “must follow new Practice Standards from 1 July 2026”, following the Minister’s December 2025 announcement that SIL providers must register from that date. Module 5A now sits in both instruments alongside the other eight modules, with its own outcomes in the Rules and its own quality indicators in the Guidelines.

The module carries four standards: supported decision-making, safeguarding, practice governance, and agreements about tenancy, housing and support arrangements.

How is Module 5A built differently?

Every other module gives an auditor two things per standard, an Outcome and its quality indicators. Module 5A publishes four layers: an Intent, an Expectation Statement, an Outcome statement, and the quality indicators. The Expectation Statement is written three ways, as a participant statement, a worker statement and a provider statement. The participant statement for supported decision-making reads: “I am supported to make decisions about my home, how I live my life, who supports me and what my goals are.”

The Commission says the Expectation Statements came out of its national consultation, and that the module was developed alongside people with disability following its Own Motion Inquiry into aspects of supported accommodation.

One practical trap worth knowing

The Commission’s consolidated “NDIS Practice Standards and Quality Indicators” document is internally dated November 2021, Version 4. Its contents run to the Specialist Disability Accommodation Module and the Verification Module, and its own summary names six supplementary modules. Module 5A is not in it. The SIL Practice Standards and their quality indicators are published as a separate document. A provider who downloads the obvious file prepares for the wrong audit.

Transition arrangements, registration group 0138 and the deadlines facing providers already delivering SIL are a separate matter, and we cover them in full on our SIL registration transition pathways page.

The review people keep asking about

The Commission ran a national consultation on an NDIS Quality Framework and on proposed changes to the Practice Standards, and states it is considering that feedback to inform the next steps of the review. Consultation has closed, no draft standard has been released, and no commencement date has been published. Nothing in the review changes what you are audited against today.