Michelle Storey, Accreditation Manager at the awarding organisation NCFE, explains what accredited training is, how it works, and why it could help your business to stand out from the crowd.
If you’ve not heard of accreditation before, don’t worry. You’re not alone.
Accredited training allows individuals to achieve a certification following completion of a course of your own design in a particular skill or sector – while also receiving a stamp of approval from a recognised awarding organisation.
This approval ensures that the learning programme or qualification is fit-for-purpose, rigourous, and quality assured, and without accreditation, the same level of recognition cannot be gained.
Here, I’m going to answer some of the most common questions when it comes to accredited training, and hopefully inspire you to think about how it can add value to your organisation.
Who can benefit from accredited training?
Anyone can! Any business, organisation, provider or educational setting wanting to offer a bespoke or personalised development opportunity to their employees or learners can get involved with designing a programme which can then be accredited or endorsed.
What are the benefits of accredited training?
There are several benefits to accredited training, such as that it:
is bespoke.
increases an individual’s skills.
can improve staff retention.
provides a stamp of approval.
Many off-the-shelf training programmes or qualifications are broad in nature and contain aspects of learning that aren’t always relevant to learners or employees.
Accredited training, however, allows organisations to develop their own training and tailor all aspects of a course to the context of their sector or business. Accredited training can improve specific soft skills or technical skills amongst learners or employees, helping to provide a pool of talented individuals who are armed with the knowledge to go above and beyond in their career or roles.
Encouraging your workforce to advance their personal and professional development can also help improve staff retention, as it displays a commitment to helping employees push themselves and grow.
What types of accredited training are there?
From an NCFE perspective, we split our accredited training into two types, depending on the needs of the organisation – Customised Qualifications and Endorsed Programmes.
Customised Qualifications are unregulated qualifications that are written and developed by an organisation, before being accredited by NCFE as the awarding organisation.
They contain learning outcomes and assessment criteria, measured through relevant assessment methods.
Once developed, these qualifications are the intellectual property of the qualification provider – you. It’s also important to note that as these qualifications are unregulated, they will not appear on the register of regulated qualifications – however, accreditation by an awarding organisation provides recognition of their suitability and quality.
Where a full qualification is not required, an Endorsed Programme – which consists of a series of informal activities carried out in-house by a programme provider – is instead endorsed by NCFE as the awarding organisation.
Activities range from seminars, to workshops, to paper-based materials – and crucially, contain no learning outcomes or assessment criteria. Again, recognition of an Endorsed Programme by an awarding organisation ensures that it is fit-forpurpose and high quality.
What could I do?
The options are endless, but don’t just take my word for it. One example, The National Talent Academy, provides online courses that equip learners with the essential skills they need to start a successful career. Its NCFE-endorsed courses are designed to support post-16 learners in colleges, schools, traineeships, and apprenticeships.
David Jaffa, Founder of the National Talent Academy, explained why they chose to make use of NCFE’s endorsement services to help them achieve their vision: “We wanted to create essential skills courses of excellent quality at a price that every school, college, and training provider can afford. By choosing NCFE’s endorsed programme route, that is what we now have.
“Having an NCFE endorsement demonstrates to schools, colleges, and training providers that our courses are robust and high quality. Learners are keen to get their certificate and are proud of their achievement. The NCFE-endorsed certificate increases learner engagement and motivation and helps learning centres ‘sell’ the benefits to learners.”
If you would like to know more about accredited training, Customised Qualifications, or Endorsed Programmes, visit www.ncfe. org.uk/learning-for-work/accreditation-andemployer-services