What's new?

What’s new in Member Education?

The purpose of the PGA Member Education department first and foremost is to help PGA Professionals deliver a high quality golfing experience for all.

To facilitate that we (The PGA) aim to:

Provide opportunities for PGA Members to access relevant training and education which is reflective of the knowledge and skills demanded by the various roles that they undertake within the golf industry
Recognise & Reward the development and growth of each member, in order that those who operate at higher levels of expertise are appropriately rewarded
Grow the awareness within the golf industry of the career development opportunities that Members have access too, as well as the ways in which Members’ achievements and ongoing personal & professional development are recognised by the PGA.

The ultimate outcome of these actions for each PGA Member is they should be able to:

Offer golfers (and their employer) an improved service in their current role
Have the opportunity to generate more income from their role for themselves (and their employer)
Make themselves even more employable in the future

As such, continuous personal & professional development is not typically a seasonal activity. Members who are fully engaged in being the best they can be; either for themselves, for the golfers they help, or for their employer, all realise that. Therefore, we will no longer be promoting a CPD ‘season’ and there are no plans to produce a CPD brochure each year[1]. All news and current information is available here 24/7 and it will be updated as and when anything new is developed for the programme.

You will see that the website has been updated with a new directory of resources available for members. Amongst these new resources are courses, a newly designed PGA Advanced Diploma, as well as the updated Personal & Professional Development Plans to list just a few.

Some of the updated and new resources available

New courses are added all the time, so ensure that you log on to the website on an ongoing basis to find out what is new. We also send out a monthly newsletter to all members with the latest news and events, access to free webinars and much more. If you aren’t receiving your copy let us know at cpd@pga.org.uk . Alternatively this can also be accessed on the Member Education website or in the members’ area of www.pga.info

The PGA Advanced Diploma programme has been redesigned to recognise the number of members who have specific interests in coaching, retail and management. The programme now includes a ‘PGA Advanced Certificate in Golf Coaching’ and a ‘PGA Advanced Certificate in Golf Business Theory’, which each have 5 modules specific written for them. A member may also choose to opt for a mixed approach to their study, combining modules from both strands, on completion will be awarded a ‘PGA Advanced Certificate in Golf Studies’. Each of these can be ‘topped up’ to the PGA Advanced Diploma on completion of a further 2 modules of a members choosing.

Following their piloting in 2010/11, the Personal & Professional Development (PPD) plans have also been amended and are now available online, rather than in a paper format. These plans have been updated with feedback offered by members and staff alike. They offer the member a chance to submit all their evidence online, without the need to generate masses of paperwork.

Further details on how to obtain CPD points for completion of a PPD plan are available online on the Member Education website.

Work is currently being completed on providing the membership with Role Descriptors for a number of specific positions at a golf facility, and they are being developed to provide members with guidance on the typical roles and responsibilities expected of someone hired to be amongst other things, a Head Professional, Director of Golf, General Manager or Assistant Professional. These descriptors will also offer golf clubs a starting point from which to identify the type of knowledge & skills that a PGA professional can be expected to offer.

One other resource to draw your attention to is the recently released ‘PGA Professional – a guide to understanding the PGA membership structure & PGA Member Education’. This will be more widely circulated in the coming months, and at the heart it, it explains how to differentiate between:

Class A and AA Professional
What it means to gain PGA Advanced Professional status, up to Master Professional status

So now is the time to consider applying for your ‘Accreditation of Professional Achievement & Learning’ (APAL). For anyone who has been a qualified PGA professional for longer than 5 years, this represents an opportunity to show how you have developed your knowledge and skills, and document the successes you have had. Providing evidence of how effectively you have worked, in whatever role you have had, means that you can gain recognition from your own Association that you are working at a higher level than would be expected of a newly qualified PGA member.

In the coming months we hope that you utilise the PGA Member Education dept and its resources to develop yourself. If you can’t find anything within the current offerings let us know, and remember we will accredit any course or qualification that you identify as being relevant to you. Just submit an ‘External Providers’ form – available online also.

[1] Please note: The re-classification (A/AA) date of Oct 1^st does remain at this time.