Self-accreditation
Self-accreditation, explained
There is no single authority that approves CPD, which sounds like a problem and is actually the starting point. Self-accreditation means you define your training, publish it clearly, and let the record speak for itself.
What self-accreditation means
Self-accreditation means the organisation that delivers the training is the organisation that defines and stands behind it. You state what the course sets out to do, what skills it builds and what a learner can demonstrate afterwards, you publish that under your own name, and you are accountable for its accuracy.
It is not a workaround and it is not a lighter version of something stricter. For non-regulated CPD there is no stricter version, because there is no body with authority over what a training provider teaches.
Why there is nothing to be approved by
There is no single accepted authority for CPD. There are several private accreditation bodies, each with its own logo, its own fee and its own criteria, and none of them is a regulator. None has government designation, none has authority over the sector, and none can confer regulatory standing.
People often hear that as a gap. It is closer to a clarification: outside regulated professions, nobody outside your organisation grades this. Once that is clear, the question stops being who will approve my training and becomes how do I describe my training so that other people can trust it.
That second question has a real answer, and it is structural rather than commercial.
Structure is what does the work
What CPD needs is structure. Open CPD frames it as aims, skills and outcomes. Aims are what the training sets out to achieve. Skills are what the learner can do as a result. Outcomes are how their practice changes.
Document those three clearly and you have something a learner, an employer, an insurer or a professional body can actually read and act on. A logo tells a reader that somebody was paid. A clear outcome statement tells them what the person in front of them can do.
If putting your own course into those words is the hard part, and it usually is, CPD Genie drafts aims, skills and outcomes from training material you already have.
How it works, in three steps
The whole sequence runs in a day, and most of the day is spent on the wording rather than on the platform.
- 1Deliver the learning
However it happens: a course, a conference, a single webinar, an in-house session. The delivery is yours and does not change.
- 2Accredit it yourself
Set up the course profile against the aims, skills and outcomes framework and accredit it under your own name. There is no application, no queue and no review to wait for.
- 3Issue certificates and badges
Branded CPD certificates and Open Badge 2.0 digital badges are generated for every learner, each carrying a unique verification ID and a public achievement page.
What makes the record hold up
Self-accreditation without evidence would be an assertion. These four things are what turn it into something checkable.
Every certificate resolves to an achievement page anyone can open. No login, no PDF attached to an email that gets lost. It shows the provider, the course, the aims, skills and outcomes, the CPD hours and a unique verification ID.
Your logo and your course name lead. The certificate is issued by you and powered by Open CPD, which is the accurate description of the relationship.
Once issued, the detail and the date cannot drift. That is not blockchain theatre, it is a permanent stored record, and it matters because a credential that can be edited afterwards proves nothing.
Every provider agrees to the Open CPD Charter and signs a declaration: legitimate authority over what you certify, accurate course information, honest CPD hours, and acceptance of consequences for misuse. That is what makes self-accreditation principled rather than merely convenient.
Open CPD does not validate, review or endorse the quality of your training, and never will. There is no hidden review board and no master standard being checked against, because none exists.
The credibility comes from you publishing your own training under your own name, in a structured, permanent, checkable place. That is the entire mechanism, and stating it plainly is part of what makes it trustworthy.
So the accurate descriptions are: systems accredited through Open CPD, powered by Open CPD, or CPD certified by your own organisation. Never approved or accredited by us, because we do not do that and saying so would be untrue.
Where external accreditation still makes sense
There are cases where buying a mark is the right commercial decision, and it is worth being honest about them. If a professional body or sector regulator specifies that CPD must come from an accredited provider, that requirement is real. If your particular market has been shaped around a specific logo and you can name the contracts you lost without it, the mark is doing measurable work.
What is worth avoiding is paying for a signal nobody asked you for. If you cannot name a client who required the mark, you may be renewing an assumption rather than meeting a requirement. There is a longer treatment of that in what are you actually buying when you pay for CPD accreditation.
Frequently asked questions
- What is self-accreditation?
- The organisation delivering the training defines it, publishes what it covers and what a learner can do afterwards, and stands behind that under its own name, rather than paying a third party to review and endorse it.
- Is self-accredited CPD valid?
- For non-regulated CPD, yes. No body holds authority over what a training provider teaches, so there is no approval that self-accreditation is missing. What makes any CPD credible is that it accurately describes the learning and can be verified, and that is what structure provides.
- Will employers accept a self-accredited certificate?
- Employers want to know what the training covered and whether the certificate is genuine. A certificate that states the aims, skills and outcomes and verifies in under a minute answers both questions, usually more fully than a logo does.
- How long does it take to set up?
- A course profile can be set up and issuing on the same day. The time goes into writing the aims, skills and outcomes properly, which is work on the course rather than on paperwork.
- Does Open CPD approve my training?
- No, and it never will. Open CPD supplies the structure, the certificates, the badges and the verification. The authority over the training is yours, which is the whole basis of self-accreditation.
- What can I say about my accreditation status?
- Systems accredited through Open CPD, powered by Open CPD, or CPD certified by your own organisation. Never accredited by Open CPD, because that would describe something that does not happen.
See it work with your own training
Set up your first course profile today, or talk it through with us first. No pressure either way.