If you need a teaching certificate for your portfolio or your appraisal, the certificate itself has to say the right things — and most of the argument is about one line on it: how many hours were live.
This page sets out what a teaching skills certificate has to show, who accredits CPD in the UK and what their numbers mean, why an appraisal and a specialty application want completely different things from the same piece of paper, and what each of the main providers actually issues. Checked against the awarding bodies on 21 September 2026.
What the certificate has to show
A certificate that satisfies a recruitment self-assessment is not a decorative object. It is evidence against a published criterion, and the criterion is specific. These are the things a scorer looks for:
- Your name and the date of completion. Dates matter: an achievement gained after the application closing date cannot be counted.
- The provider’s name. Ideally with a verifiable accreditation number on the certificate itself.
- The duration, in hours. Not “one day” — hours. The threshold is numerical.
- How much of it was live. This is the line that decides it. IMT and PHST both require “at least six hours (i.e. a one-day course) of synchronous (live) teaching time”. A certificate that says “12 hours of CPD” without distinguishing live from self-paced is ambiguous, and ambiguity is resolved against you.
- That the subject was teaching. IMT: “Training can only be included in this section if it was specifically focused on teaching.”
- CPD accreditation. Not strictly required by the IMT wording, but it is the fastest way for a scorer to accept that the course is what it claims to be.
The one thing that fails. A purely self-paced online course, however many hours it carries, does not meet the six-hour live requirement on its own. This is the most common reason a teaching certificate is not accepted. If a course is sold as “online” without stating live hours, ask the provider to confirm in writing before you buy.
Who accredits CPD in the UK, and what the numbers mean
There is no single UK CPD regulator. Two routes matter for a doctor buying a teaching course.
The CPD Certification Service (CPD UK)
An independent accreditation body that assesses courses and issues each provider a number. Erudical is listed as provider 13684, with the Teach the Teacher course individually accredited. On the difference between hours and points, their own answer is that there is effectively none: “Most professional bodies use CPD hours as their measure, and where CPD points or credits are used, these are typically a 1:1 ratio with CPD hours. By this, 1 CPD point would be equal to 1 CPD hour.”
The Federation of the Royal Colleges of Physicians of the UK
Approves external CPD events — live events, live-streamed events, webinars — and distance learning for physicians. Its credit rule is “1 credit for each hour of CPD provided”, capped at 8 credits per day, with hours rounded to the nearest whole number. Applications must be submitted at least eight weeks before the event, and since 31 March 2024 the Federation no longer accepts retrospective applications after an event has run.
Individual Royal Colleges also run their own CPD schemes. Their scope varies and they do not all accredit third-party courses — check the specific college’s own page rather than assuming.
The practical consequence: when you are comparing courses, “12 CPD points” and “12 CPD hours” mean the same thing, and neither tells you how many of those hours were live. Only the live figure is scored.
An appraisal and an application want different things
These are two separate requirements that happen to use the same certificate, and they are graded on opposite principles.
| NHS appraisal and revalidation | Specialty recruitment self-assessment | |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum hours | None. The GMC: “We don’t require you to be a member of a college or faculty CPD scheme, to undertake a specific number of hours of CPD each year or to acquire a particular number of CPD credits.” | Fixed and countable. At least six hours of live teaching for the IMT and PHST training-in-teaching point. |
| What is assessed | Your reflection. “You must reflect on what you have learned from CPD activity and how this has helped to maintain or improve the quality of your practice.” | Whether the evidence meets a published threshold. Reflection is not scored. |
| Coverage | Must “cover the whole of your practice, and be tailored to your scope of practice and needs”, every year. | One domain, one certificate, one score. |
| Quantity | NHS England’s Medical Appraisal Guide 2022: “The GMC emphasise the quality rather than the quantity of supporting information required.” | Quantity is the whole test. |
So a course that is perfectly adequate for appraisal — a two-hour webinar you reflected on thoughtfully — scores zero on an application. And a course that scores on an application still needs a reflective note to be worth anything at appraisal. Do both: keep the certificate for the application, and write the reflection for the appraisal.
What Erudical’s certificate says
The certificate names you, the course, the completion date, and the accreditation: The CPD Certification Service, provider number 13684, which can be verified independently on the CPD Certification Service’s own provider register. It states an 8-hour live day containing 6 hours of live teaching and the self-paced hours separately, so the live figure is on the document rather than something you have to argue for.
What the certificate looks like, what it states and how it is issued is set out in full on your Teach the Teacher certificate.
Enrolment is £199 and includes the live day, 20 self-paced modules worth over 12 hours, three marked assignments and a place at the NMERC 2026 conference — up to 24 CPD hours in total. Training in teaching and presentations are separate domains in the IMT self-assessment, so they add: 1 point for the course plus up to 8 points for a national oral presentation, so up to 9 of the IMT 2027 self-assessment points for £199. On the published 2026 tiers the same two domains total up to 7. The conditions are set out in full on presentation points for IMT and ST3.
If the teaching point is not accepted, you get the £199 back under the points guarantee — refunded within 14 working days, on production of your certificate and written confirmation of the outcome. No claim has been made in eight years and more than a thousand doctors.
A certificate that states the live hours on the document
£199. Six hours of live teaching, 20 self-paced modules, NMERC 2026, CPD provider 13684.
Frequently asked questions
What should a teaching skills certificate for doctors actually say?
Your name, the completion date, the provider, the total duration in hours, and — the part that decides whether it scores — how many of those hours were live and synchronous. It should also make clear that the subject was teaching, because IMT states that “training can only be included in this section if it was specifically focused on teaching”. CPD accreditation with a verifiable provider number is not formally required but makes a scorer’s decision straightforward.
Is a CPD accredited teaching course enough for IMT?
Only if it contains at least six hours of live, synchronous teaching. CPD accreditation on its own says nothing about live hours: a 12-hour self-paced course can be fully CPD accredited and still fail the criterion. IMT requires “at least six hours (i.e. a one-day course) of synchronous (live) teaching time”, additional to any teaching training that formed part of your medical degree.
What is the difference between CPD hours, CPD points and CPD credits?
In practice, nothing. The CPD Certification Service states that where points or credits are used they are “typically a 1:1 ratio with CPD hours. By this, 1 CPD point would be equal to 1 CPD hour.” The Federation of the Royal Colleges of Physicians of the UK awards “1 credit for each hour of CPD provided”, capped at 8 per day. Providers use the terms inconsistently, so compare the numbers rather than the labels — and remember that none of these figures tell you how many hours were live.
Who accredits CPD for doctors in the UK?
There is no single regulator. The CPD Certification Service is an independent accreditation body that assesses courses and issues provider numbers. The Federation of the Royal Colleges of Physicians of the UK approves external events and distance learning for physicians, and requires applications at least eight weeks before the event; since 31 March 2024 it no longer accepts retrospective applications. Individual Royal Colleges run their own schemes with varying scope, and not all of them accredit third-party courses.
Does a teaching certificate count for my appraisal?
Yes, as CPD — but the requirement is different from a recruitment application. The GMC sets no minimum: “We don’t require you to be a member of a college or faculty CPD scheme, to undertake a specific number of hours of CPD each year or to acquire a particular number of CPD credits.” What appraisal asks for is CPD covering your whole scope of practice, every year, with reflection on what you learned. NHS England’s Medical Appraisal Guide 2022 puts it as “the GMC emphasise the quality rather than the quantity of supporting information required”. An application, by contrast, scores against fixed numerical thresholds.
Can I use one teaching certificate for both my appraisal and my application?
Yes. Keep the certificate itself as the evidence for the self-assessment, and write a short reflective note linking the training to your own teaching practice for the appraisal. The certificate alone is weak appraisal evidence because reflection is what appraisal assesses; the reflection alone is worthless on an application because the scorer needs the dated document with the hours on it.
How do I check a provider’s CPD accreditation is real?
Ask for the accreditation body and the provider number, then look it up on that body’s own register rather than taking the logo on the website at face value. Erudical is listed with The CPD Certification Service as provider 13684, with the Teach the Teacher course individually accredited. If a provider will not give you a number, that is your answer.
How long does a teaching certificate stay valid for an application?
There is no expiry stated in the IMT or PHST training-in-teaching criterion — the requirement is that the training happened, was additional to your medical degree, and met the six-hour live threshold. What does have a hard deadline is the timing relative to your application: an achievement gained after the closing date cannot be counted, even by a day. Check your specialty’s scoring page for any additional recency wording before relying on an older certificate.
Next: what a teaching course scores in your specialty, the full teaching qualifications ladder, or the ten providers compared.
Sources: IMT Recruitment — application scoring · The CPD Certification Service — Erudical, provider 13684 · Federation of the Royal Colleges of Physicians — CPD approval · GMC — CPD for revalidation · NHS England — Medical Appraisal Guide
Checked against IMT Recruitment, PHST Recruitment, the GMC, NHS England’s Medical Appraisal Guide 2022, The CPD Certification Service, the Federation of the Royal Colleges of Physicians of the UK and each provider’s own page on 21 September 2026.