In 2026, the question facing awarding bodies and professional certification organisations is no longer whether change is coming, but which change will determine whether a qualification continues to be trusted, relevant and defensible five or ten years from now?. Employers are questioning what qualifications really signal, learners are navigating AI-assisted work environments and regulators are reshaping expectations around trust and assurance.
To explore this, we asked a group of assessment, education and certification experts a single question: “What is the one change awarding bodies should focus on in 2026 to remain genuinely valuable to learners and employers?”
Their answers do not point to a single trend or technology. Instead, they converge on deeper themes around trust, judgement, foundational knowledge and adaptability in a world of constant change. From rethinking what competence means in an AI-present workplace to moving beyond static certificates towards ongoing confidence, these perspectives reveal how the role of assessment is evolving and why its relevance depends on more than keeping up with the latest tools.
The 2026 Mandate: Returning to Foundational Mastery
Ela Slutski, Managing Director, Cirrus Assessment
In 2026, the noise of “tech-first” learning has reached a breaking point. To remain valuable, awarding bodies must move away from “chasing the feature” and return to validating their foundational subject-matter expertise. True value lies in a professional’s ability to navigate their field regardless of the tools or the “situational weather” of the moment.
Assessment of Knowledge, Not Navigation
Awarding bodies must decouple subject expertise from technical delivery. Unless a certification is specifically about a software tool, the assessment should focus on the core principles of the discipline. The Principle: A learner who understands the fundamental laws of finance, engineering, or law shouldn’t be “de-valued” because the interface of the day changed. Awarding bodies must ensure that “how well you use the tool” never masks “how poorly you understand the subject.”
Situational Resilience Over “Tech Embracement”
Instead of asking learners to “embrace” every passing trend (like GenAI), awarding bodies should measure how a learner applies their subject knowledge to any given situation.
Strengthening the Robust Professional Identity
Certification isn’t going anywhere, it is the bedrock of professional trust. However, the metric of a certification must change. It should represent a Robust Professional Identity, a seal of approval that says this person has the intellectual depth to remain relevant as technologies (like Quantum or AI) cycle in and out of fashion.
By measuring the depth of the base rather than the speed of the pivot, awarding bodies provide employers with something far more valuable: reliable, long-term talent.
Rethinking Trust in Qualifications
Robbie Burns, Head of Business Consulting, Cirrus Assessment
In 2026, awarding bodies need to stop thinking in terms of certificates and start thinking in terms of ongoing confidence. A single exam result only proves one thing: that at a specific moment, under specific conditions, someone met the standard. The real question for learners, employers and regulators is now: “Can I trust that this person is still capable today?”
This shift will not come from bigger or more complex exams but from rethinking what a qualification represents. Instead of being a static badge from the past, it needs to act more like a live signal of current capability, refreshed and reinforced over time. How that signal is designed, governed and recognised is where the real work and opportunity now sit.
That’s not a bison!
Peter Westcott, Education Technology Consultant and Imagineer
In this world of burgeoning GenAI; to remain relevant to learners and employers, awarding and professional accreditation bodies need to focus on developing learners’ bullshit detectors. Humans are lazy, sorry not lazy, they’ll always try to find the most economical way of doing things and that includes relying on GenAI to ‘help’ them.
The AI threat/opportunity isn’t a new thing, it’s a new iteration of an old thing; a way of summarising, preserving and presenting knowledge. The Lascaux cave paintings, cuneiform text, books and the WWW are all iterations of this. What makes GenAI dangerous/promising is its scale, scope and availability. To be truly valuable to employers (if there will be such things) candidates need to be able to demonstrate their ability to determine what’s a valid response from GenAI and, more importantly, be able to craft a prompt that will generate a quality response. And it’s the challenge to assessment platforms that they can have the right question types to test these abilities.
So when Thurg the Neanderthal is presented with a painting of a six legged beast he can say…
AI, Competence and Trust
Tom Vidler, Chief Revenue Officer, TEAMCo
From an assessment and operational standpoint, the most critical change for awarding bodies in 2026 is recognising that AI has fundamentally altered what assessment must prove. In a world where AI is present in real jobs, testing knowledge recall in isolation no longer provides a meaningful signal of competence or risk.
Assessment needs to evolve to focus on judgement, decision-making, ethical reasoning, and the ability to interpret, validate and challenge AI-generated outputs. This also requires a shift away from single, high-stakes moments towards continuous assurance, where competence is evidenced and refreshed over time. In this context, trust becomes the core product of assessment — not content testing.
“AI doesn’t remove the need for assessment, it raises the bar. The future isn’t AI-proof exams, it’s AI-aware assurance. Awarding bodies that can credibly demonstrate judgement, accountability and trust in an AI-present world will become more valuable than ever.”
Policy, Reform and Constant Change
Marketing Team, led by Joanne Herman, Marketing Manager, TEAMCo
From a broader system and market perspective, this transformation is happening within an environment already shaped by significant external change. Awarding bodies are navigating qualification reform, evolving government policy, regulatory expectations, online delivery requirements and shifting employer needs often simultaneously.
The challenge for 2026 is therefore not a single reform, but the ability to operate confidently in a state of ongoing change. Organisations that remain valuable will be those that build adaptable governance, resilient delivery models and trusted partnerships — enabling them to respond to reform without disruption, while continuing to support learners and employers effectively.
“There isn’t one change awarding bodies need to respond to , there’s a constant state of change. The organisations that succeed will be those that understand the wider system they operate in and are built to adapt, rather than react.”
Learning That Fits Real Life
Hugh McNeela, Sales Account Manager, Corporate Learning UK & Ireland, ReadSpeaker
Awarding bodies and professional certification providers should focus on personalised, flexible learning pathways that reflect how people actually learn and work today. Learners expect training that adapts to their needs, pace, and habits, and at the same time, employers need certifications that produce job-ready professionals, not just credential holders. By aligning both needs, certification bodies can help close the skills gap and deliver clear value to the labour market.
Equally important is building certification systems that offer the same opportunities to every learner, regardless of background, language, disability, or prior experience. When accessibility and inclusion are built into training and assessment from the start, certification becomes fairer, more credible, and more aligned with the idea of lifelong learning.
Redefining value in 2026
Taken together, these perspectives point to a clear conclusion for 2026. The future value of awarding bodies will not be secured by reacting to individual technologies or reforms, but by strengthening what qualifications fundamentally stand for. Trust, judgement, depth of knowledge and ongoing confidence are becoming the true measures of relevance. Organisations that focus on these signals, and design assessment systems resilient enough to uphold them through constant change, will continue to matter to learners, employers and regulators alike. Those that do not risk delivering credentials that look familiar, but say less and less about real capability over time.
