To regulate or not to regulate... that is the frequently asked question
Never did I think I would quote Shakespeare in a career working in education and training for the sport and physical activity sector…
By Colin Huffen, Head of Regulation and Standards, CIMSPA.
Increasingly people from all sorts of organisations, but particularly governing bodies of sport, are asking for our thoughts on whether their training should be regulated. Most people asking us this question are doing it for all the right reasons, often as part of their own due diligence or evaluation of cost benefit or risk analysis.
I suppose I should start by explaining what I mean. And what I think they mean by ‘regulation’: whether a piece of training should be developed and approved into a qualification via an approved regulator (e.g., OFQUAL, SQA or Qualification Wales or CCEA) and an awarding organisation resulting in a formally regulated qualification with certification and quality assurance provided by the awarding organisation.
My simple answer to the frequently asked question is, in most cases, yes, we can prove that regulation has increased standards, provided standardisation, and improved the quality of the experience for people taking training in most cases.
But of course, in the interest of balance there are exceptions…
The history of regulation in our sector (it sounds boring, I know, but bear with me) is interesting and important to people like me and hopefully to you.
In sport, the United Kingdom Coaching Certificate (UKCC) endorsement scheme ran from 2004 to 2019, this endorsement scheme was for sport’s governing bodies providing training for sports coaches.
As part of the endorsement criteria, it was mandatory that the training must be formally regulated and certificated by a regulated awarding organisation or university. A blanket approach to regulation of training for sports coaches which saw the numbers of qualifications awarded by awarding organisations such as, 1st4sport, BCU, ASQ and BHS increase significantly.
When the UKCC endorsement scheme was reviewed in 2018 by Manchester Metropolitan university no conclusions were drawn on whether regulation had increased the quality of coaches training, but it did state that the cost of becoming a coach had increased and some coaches and sport’s governing bodies were finding that a barrier for people to become coaches.
Later research by UK Coaching in 2020 showed that 54% of coaches did not hold a coaching qualification.
In the fitness industry we saw the emergence of the register for exercise professionals (REPS) in 2004, covering fitness instructors, personal trainers, group exercise instructors and expanding into GP referral specialists and people who can work with people with medical conditions such as, Cancer, Cardiac Rehabilitation, Neurological Conditions and falls prevention.
Entry to the register also required people to have a formally regulated qualification, and within 6-8 years that became the norm for the fitness industry.
REPS took a mixed approach to regulation, for an occupation (job role) you needed a regulated qualification as your starting point, but from there nonregulated training was acceptable to show the enhancement of your skills and expertise.
For example, for a Personal Trainer to enter the register they would need to first complete a Level 2 qualification in fitness instructing as a prerequisite to then progress onto or at the same time a level 3 personal training qualification. The qualifications were awarded by multiple awarding organisations such as, Active IQ, YMCA Awards, Innovate Awarding.
Once those qualifications had been achieved growing your knowledge base into specialist areas such as, technical elements like Strength and Conditioning, Indoor Cycling or previously mentioned medical conditions training was not required to be a regulated qualification but designed, delivered, assessed, and certificated by specialist training providers.
Clear, right? Still with me?
It’s also fair to add the decision of whether training should or shouldn’t be regulated can’t be made without awarding organisations.
They must work within specific conditions outlined by their regulator, in England OFQUAL call this the ‘conditions of recognition’.
Within those conditions there may be times when a formal regulated qualification is not the right option, for example where there will be very low numbers of certifications, or it’s a very specialist qualification and the expertise isn’t available to develop it, or where the business case just doesn’t stack up.
A lot goes into designing and developing a qualification to meet the regulators requirements, it’s a costly exercise and sometimes it’s just not worth it.
At CIMSPA we have tried to learn from what our sector has learnt from working in and outside regulation in the last 20 years (well that’s what they told me was one of the reasons they hired me…) and have been given the responsibility for endorsement across the whole of the sector with both UKCC and REPS endorsement being CIMSPA’s responsibility.
We’ve tried, I would say successfully (then I would!) to take a pragmatic approach to the endorsement of training and the role of regulation with one and a half eyes on how we can do this better in future.
We have adopted a similar approach to REPS where we have a mixed approach to whether the training should be regulated. Some things are quite clear, for example to enter CIMSPA practitioner membership the training needs to be endorsed by us and be awarded by either a regulated AO, University or IFATE, SDS or QW in the case of apprenticeships.
Then once people have met that minimum requirement, they need to keep themselves current and competent, we incentivise compliance through CPD points.
CPD does not have to be a regulated qualification it can be training developed, delivered, and assessed by a training provider. Training that enables people to develop their career, gaining greater skills in working with new populations and environments, carries a greater weight of CPD points and is given greater support by CIMSPA colleagues.
Most organisations follow the guidance in our endorsement policy, but we never operate a no-can do attitude when there is a clear rational not to regulate then that doesn’t mean it can’t be endorsed.
We can discuss the appropriateness of not regulating with our Professional Development Committees, these are the employer led groups that oversee CIMSPA’s work and sign off our endorsements.
It’s important we have the right and proportionate approach to regulation in our sector, and if we don’t, we are creating barriers for people who want to work with us and spending money in areas where it could have a greater impact.
Getting it wrong, deregulating areas where there is a high risk of harm would be catastrophic. Personally, that won’t happen on my watch. With that in mind we’ve spent lots of time looking at where we can learn from good (and bad) practice in other sectors.
That has informed the development of a new policy and guidance on minimum standards for deployment. This gives us a clear evidence-based rational to make decisions about whether not only we should be providing a regulated or non-regulated approach to enter the industry but also whether and how often we should be checking competence.
As many of you have heard me say before, technically I’m a basketball coach, I have a certificate from 1998 but please don’t ask me to run a session I’m not currently competent.
In the coming months we’ll be working with the Professional Development Committees to bring this new policy to life with the end game being a clearer set of guidance on whether a formally regulated qualification is needed, and who should be providing the training and assessment. We’ll also look at how we monitor compliance (if that’s necessary).
That work will take months to complete and years to implement. We completely understand the decision of whether to regulate or not maybe something you’re considering right now, and you can’t wait for that. Please don’t wait for us, make your best judgement considering all the pros and cons and if you want help with that you know where we are.
A final word of warning though, if you are going to deregulate make sure you can justify going against the industry guidance to those that may ask, including the legal profession, claiming not to know, understand or not having a risk-based rational for the decision won’t wash in the worst-case scenario.
You’re not on your own with this myself and colleagues at CIMSPA are talking about this to people every day, we’re well informed and can support you to make the right decisions for your organisation and your people.