London School of Sports Massage |
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The London School of Sports Massage had been accredited by BTEC since the 1990s, but over the decades their vocational training changed significantly.
They are now owned by Pearson, a huge global organisation who deliver education to millions of learners worldwide. In the UK they focus on large-scale, mainstream education, but our very small, customised, part-time, qualification no longer fits in with their organisation’s frameworks.
To continue under their accreditation, we would have to significantly increase the guided learning hours of our qualification to match their full-time education programmes. But these are based on the needs of school leavers and this doesn’t suite the adult learners who come to us because they need more condensed part-time training. Making the course longer and more costly would be unnecessary and also be impossible for the people who want to train with us.
So with no other options, we had no choice but to end our association with BTEC when our qualification came up for renewal this year (2026).
But this really wasn’t such a bad thing.
Over the years, BTEC qualifications have become much more academically focused:
This made their accreditation process far less relevant to us.
Back in 2007, the Institute of Sport and Remedial Massage ISRM was established to act as the BTEC centre, delivering our qualification through a number of other independent training centres in addition to the LSSM.
Over time, and making up for the decline in the way BTEC were accrediting us, ISRM started to take over the roles of quality assurance; overseeing practical skills, coursework assessments and maintaining professional standards
With its specialist expertise, ISRM became better able to accredit the qualification than BTEC had been.
To focus on this new emerging role in quality assurance, ISRM branched out and created a new organisation called, Soft Tissue Therapy Qualifications (STTQ) which is a dedicated accrediting body, specialising in this unique healthcare sector. It has independently developed robust accreditation systems and quality assurance processes which align with the Ofqual recognition guidelines (in a similar way to BTEC).
STTQ provides:
A focused and specialist approach to accrediting soft tissue therapy training with a strong emphasis on practical clinical competence which meets the needs of the profession.
STTQ will ensures that our qualification remains:
We are confident this approach better supports both our learners, their clients and the wider profession.