Continuing Professional Development System

BACKGROUND

As the national governing body for paddle sports in Ireland, Canoeing Ireland has developed a certification system to ensure high-quality, safe paddle sports activities. While certification reflects a paddler’s skills at a point in time, ongoing practice and professional development are essential parts of an instructor/coaches role.

To support this, Canoeing Ireland is introducing a new Continuous Professional Development (CPD) programme from June 2025. This system helps instructors, coaches, and leaders stay current, reflect on their practice, and continue to grow in their roles.

POLICY

All instructors, coaches and leaders require a valid CPD certificate

Instructors/coaches and leaders will have 3 years to gain the first certification.

The CPD will be a points-based system where instructors, coaches and leaders need to record 100 points to gain a CPD certificate which is valid for 3 years. Once they have obtained a cert, they then have 3 years to gather another 100 points.

Certain exemptions can be granted for certain situations such as parenthood or Illness.

Instructors, Coaches and leaders not gaining the points will become invalid.
Valid instructor/Coaches/Paddlers will be able to.

  1. Order certificates
  2. Be listed as a valid instructor
  3. Be referred by canoeing Ireland as instructors to clubs or third parties (eg,Local sports partnerships)

Paddlers will be responsible for recording their points on an online form. Once they have entered activities worth 100 points a CPD cert will be added to their profile.

Paddlers will be emailed a reminder when it is near expiry.

Those holding multiple instructor/Coach/Leader awards need only gain 1 CPD certificate every 3 years at any level.

The points will be awarded for qualified activities in the following categories and an instructor/coach should have at least one from each category.

Completion of activities only count from the commencement of the CPD period.

The 3-year certificate cycle will be individual to each paddler depending on when the CPD cert was awarded.

CPD POINT CATEGORIES

Category A

  • CPD events run by Canoeing Ireland and Sport Ireland
  • CPD events
  • Benchmarking events specific to Discipline.
  • Gaining Instructor/coaching awards

Category B

  • Canoeing Ireland training and assessment
  • Co-delivery with another canoeing Ireland Instructor/Coach/Leader.
  • Relevant academic qualification (Sports/Coaching/Education)

 

Type of ActivityPoints Allocated
A
CPD event (symposia etc)80
Benchmarking event80
Facilitation of a CPD event (Instructor Developer only)100
Acquiring a higher level of instructional/coaching qualification100
Acquiring an instructional/coaching level in another discipline100
B
Delivery of training course with another peer instructor/coach40
Delivery of assessment with another peer instructor/coach40
Completion of a relevant academic qualification70
Attendance at Sport Ireland Coaching CPD event60
Attending a higher level of instructional/coaching training80
Acquiring a higher level of skills qualification60
Attending an approved skills workshop60
Acquiring a personal skill level in another discipline60
Delivery of training course without another peer instructor/coach30
Delivery of assessment without another peer instructor/coach10
Holding another recognised NGB instructional/coaching award50

HOW TO SUBMIT YOUR CPD POINTS

A form is available below which instructors/ coaches should fill out as they complete any of the above activities. The form will allocate points to their profile and once they attain 100 points a CPD cert will be added to their profile to show they are valid for 3 years. It will be the responsibility of the instructor to add activities to their own profile, any activities added in the 3-year period will be counted and a certificate will be awarded once 100 points have been reached in those 3 years.

A reminder email will notify instructors when their CPD cert is running out.

NEW CPD EVENTS

Instructors can apply to create new CPD events in conjunction with clubs and providers. These activities must be at affordable, open to all instructors and meet a need in development.

All applications will be reviewed by the Training and Development Unit.