Written by David Hall, September 17th 2026.

The Institute of Professional Development was founded on a simple belief: professionals, teams and organisations perform better, be more productive, more efficient and more capable when learning and development is delivered to the highest standard.

Most people would accept that in principle. What happens in practice is the problem. Professional development has grown into a substantial industry, but the quality of what is delivered varies enormously, and there has been little independent scrutiny to tell the difference. Too much learning is designed and delivered to no real standard at all and when the quality of the intervention is left to chance, so is the improvement in performance it was meant to produce.

The Institute of Professional Development exists to change that: to raise the quality of professional development itself, so that the promise of better performance is actually kept.

Why the Institute was founded

Behind that belief sits a frustration familiar to anyone who has commissioned or delivered training: professional development is too often judged by whether it happened rather than whether it was any good. Programmes multiply and budgets are spent, but the actual quality of the learning intervention, the thing that determines whether people and organisations improve, goes largely unexamined.

The Institute was founded to put that quality back at the centre. It is an independent body with a clear remit: to improve professional development by raising the standard of learning interventions through industry research, setting a clear benchmark for what good looks like, and helping the whole sector reach it. It does not deliver the training it assesses, and it is governed by its own Senate of academics and senior practitioners drawn from UK business schools, so that its judgements answer to evidence, not commercial interest.

“Better learning is not a nice-to-have — it is what makes people and organisations measurably better at what they do,” says Professor Ruth Ashford, Chair of the IoPD Senate. “An institute’s job is to protect that quality, and to make the highest standard the expected one rather than the exception.”

What the Institute stands for

Strip everything back and the Institute has a single purpose: to raise the standard of professional development, and to make recognition mean something again. Everything it does is measured against that.
Three commitments hold the work together:

• Independence. IoPD assesses; it does not sell the training it assesses. Recognition is earned against a published standard, not negotiated.
• Evidence. What “good” looks like is grounded in academic research and practitioner insight, not the loudest voice in the room.
• Transparency. Providers know exactly what they are being held to, and buyers know exactly what a mark of recognition guarantees.

The people this serves are straightforward to name. Learners deserve to know their effort counts for something beyond the course itself. Employers deserve to know what they are actually buying when they invest in their people. And providers who do genuinely good work deserve a credible, independent way to prove it and to stand apart from those who do not.

How the Institute does its work

Improving professional development is practical work, not a slogan. IoPD does it through five connected activities — industry research, raising standards, sharing best practice, convening the profession, and leading the debate on where it should go next. Certification is part of the picture, but it is a means to the end, not the point.

Improving practice through research

It starts with evidence. A view on what “good” looks like is worth little if it is only opinion, so IoPD anchors its standards in academic research and practitioner data, asking what actually correlates with capable professionals and organisations that learn well, rather than what merely looks impressive.

This is where the Institute’s Senate matters. Its membership is drawn from established UK business schools, including Leeds Business School, Manchester Metropolitan University, Newcastle and the University of East London, alongside senior practitioners, industry specialists and educational experts. That mix keeps the standard rigorous enough to satisfy an academic and practical enough to mean something on a Monday morning.

“Rigour is not bureaucracy, it is respect for the learner,” says Dr David Perrin, a Director on the IoPD Senate. “If we are going to tell the market that something meets our standard, we owe it to everyone to be able to show our working. Research is what lets us say ‘this is what good looks like’ and defend it.”

Raising standards and recognising those who meet them
Research only changes things when it is turned into a standard people can actually be held to. That is the job of the IoPD Recognised scheme: it converts what the evidence says into an independent benchmark that providers, courses and events are assessed against, recognising Approved Courses and Endorsed Events that genuinely meet the mark and withholding recognition from those that do not.

Assessment is built for both rigour and scale. It is AI-assisted but human-decided: technology does the heavy lifting of gathering and organising evidence, and a qualified assessor makes every judgement that counts. Recognition has to be earned and it can be lost, which is precisely what makes it worth having.

“Recognition should be hard to earn and easy to trust,” says Professor Ruth Ashford. “If a learner or an employer sees our mark, they should be able to assume that someone independent has genuinely looked under the bonnet, not just checked that an invoice was paid.”

Sharing what works

Standards and research are only useful if the profession can act on them. So, the Institute puts real effort into translation, turning what it learns through assessment and research into practical guidance the sector can pick up and use.

That takes the form of regular industry updates, benchmarks and briefings: what the best providers are doing differently, where common practice is falling short and how organisations can close the gap. The aim is not to gatekeep good practice but to spread it, to raise the floor across the whole profession, not just certify the ceiling.

Convening the profession

Standards are set in documents but tested in rooms full of people. IoPD brings practitioners, academics and employers together, through its own gatherings and through the Endorsed Events it recognizes, so that the people who shape professional development can challenge each other, compare notes and move the standard forward. It is also where the Institute’s recognition becomes visible: an endorsed event signals that what is on the agenda has been held to the same independent bar as everything else the Institute puts its name to.

Leading the conversation

An institute worth its name does not just police the present, it helps shape what comes next. The world of work is changing quickly: AI is reshaping skills, careers are less linear, and the half-life of what people know is getting shorter. IoPD uses its position at the intersection of academia and practice to take a clear, evidence-led view on where professional development is heading, and to say so publicly.

“The question is no longer whether people will keep learning, they have no choice,” says Dr David Perrin. “It is whether that learning will be recognised in a way anyone can trust. An institute that stays quiet on the hard questions is just an administrator. We would rather help set the direction than certify it after the fact.”

The people behind the standard and where we go next

An institute is ultimately only as credible as the people willing to stand behind it. IoPD is governed by a Senate chaired by Professor Ruth Ashford, with Dr David Perrin among its Directors, and academics and senior practitioners drawn from established UK business schools. These are real names attached to real judgements, which is exactly the point. Independence is not a claim you make; it is a group of credible people prepared to be held to it.

The Institute of Professional Development is early in its journey, and deliberately so. The problem it exists to solve, recognition that means something, is not solved by a single scheme or a single year. It is solved by holding a line, consistently, until the market comes to expect it.

If you deliver professional development and you are confident in the quality of your work, there is now an independent way to prove it. If you invest in your people, there is now a clearer way to know what you are buying. And if you care about where this profession is heading, there is now a body that intends to help shape the answer rather than watch from the sidelines.

That is the standard we are building. We would be glad to have you help us raise it.