The Smart School

When deciding to become a coach one of the first questions you should ask yourself is what credibility the course has and whether it’s a qualification or an accreditation.  But before looking at this, let’s face the question of regulation.

Regulation

Currently, there is no formal regulatory framework for coaching. This might be cause for concern or it might be a cause for celebration. Perhaps it’s too early to say.

It might be a cause for concern because it can be difficult to tell the good training companies and the great coaches from the bad ones. But it might be a cause for celebration because the freedom that exists is currently allowing for creativity and energy to express itself within a framework of ethical self-regulation.

What must be key for any buyer of coaching services or coaching training, is that the service provider has affiliation with a reputable coaching body and can evidence its credibility.  There are a number of such organisations overseeing coaching at the moment in the UK.  They can roughly be divided into self-regulating coaching bodies and Institutes which include coaching in their remit.

The self-regulating coaching bodies have emerged from the coaching industry itself and are made up of coaches who set their standards for coaching and coach-training.  These includes such organisations as ICF (International Coach Federation), EMCC (European Mentoring and Coaching Council and AoC (Association of Coaching)

The institutes involved in this field encompass coaching as part of their strategic overview around management, training and HR. They include ITOL (Institute of Training and Occupational Learning), ILM (Instiute of Leadership and Management) and CIPD (Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development).

The Smart School has a strategic alliance with ITOL. We chose to allign ourselves with a UK institute in order to offer the professional status of institute membership and the award of post-nominal letters.  The Smart School have created the coaching qualifications for ITOL which means that their qualifications are delivered exclusively by ITOL itself and the Smart School.   This was a deliberate choice to ensure that the quality and content of this exceptional diploma were not diluted.

Accreditation or Qualification

Many schools offer accredited courses.  These are perfectly acceptable as coaching credentials but they differ from qualifications.

An accreditation means that the training company will award the certificate and it will be endorsed or accredited by a third party overseeing body. 

To be a qualification, it must be awarded by an ‘awarding body’ – this is an organisation which is licensed by government to award qualifications. 

The Smart School qualifications are all awarded by ITOL which is one of these awarding bodies.  This means they are genuine qualifications with all the credibility and status that this brings.

To summarise then, it is important to look at the nature of any course you are signing up for to see whether it is independently awarded or simply privately awarded and of course whether it is receives proper oversight from one of the organisations mentioned above.

If you want to know more about our qualifications, why not download details of the courses from this site or book to attend one of our free seminars.