The Society Of Business Practitioners, UK

Can anybody tell me about The Society Of Business Practitioners, UK. Is it a professional body recognised by the UK government? What about the International Professional Manager's Association.uk? I am interested in the Graduate Diploma offered by the two institutions. Thank you

 

The best resource I know for all these professional organizations (which I don't track, since they rarely award degrees) are a series of books by Lal Balkaran in Canada, for instance A Guide to Over 400 Organizations and Their Designations.
www.lbapublications.com

 

A quick Google search yields:

"About the Society of Business Practitioners - UK (SBP)

The Society of Business Practitioners was formed in 1956 by and for the benefit of a group of highly successful business practitioners. Their aim was to share their expertise, knowledge and skills that made them successful.

Today, the Society has changed. The Society's current view is that membership should now be opened to suitable applicants who can show that they have a genuine wish to make a success of their life through study and practice of business. The society still selects its members, but only with a view to giving assistance, sharing knowledge through learning and advantage to those who indicate their wish to utilize these to suceed in the business enterprise.

It has an international recognition standing and the SBP qualifications are accepted by a number of colleges and universities. The SBP Post Graduate Diploma Award has been evaluated at the first degree level by the Educational Credentials Evaluators, Inc. (USA), and accepted for credit transfer by the University of the State of New York for its Bachelor of Science (Business) degree programme. Additionally, SBP Diploma holders gain entry into Bachelor and Master degree comes from universities in the UK, USA and Australia.

Exemptions are also obtainable from most other professional institutes and examination bodies such as ABE, ACCA, ICEA, MAMSA, FBA, IMS, PBTM, IFA, CEA (United Kingdom), CIFA, CSM, CICAM (Canada), CIM (Cyprus) and WCIMT (Australia)."

This suggests that it has no formal recognition in academic circles in UK, but may offer legitimate qualifications which are usuable in specific contexts. You would need to contact those claimed as accepting their qualifications to find out more about their standards.

Malcolm S Jenner

 

The best source is the book British Qualifications, which should be available in a library with a decent international education collection. See http://styluspub.com/books/book5151.html for a description of the book. This book is used by most admissions officers/ credential evaluators in evaluating British professional qualifications. A surprising number of them are considered equivalent to bachelor's degrees, and many yield tertiary academic credit.

Less comprehensive, but still useful, is UCAS' Guide to UK qualifications at http://www.ucas.ac.uk/quals/ukquals/index.html . (For those interested in international qualifications, their international guide at http://www.ucas.ac.uk/quals/ukquals/index.html is useful- it's sort of a mini set of PIER guides. Their comments on the USA are particularly interesting- they recommend a minimum combined SAT of 1100 for entry into a British university!)

 

Generally speaking, the possession of professional qualifications is the evidence of one's proficiency in particular knowledge and skills (e.g. accounting, management, engineering). The professional qualifications are for vocational rather than academic purpose. Of course, some professional qualifications from well-regarded professional bodies are treated as equivalent to the first degree and thus they can be used to apply for master degree programs.

Therefore, it is important for one to choose some well-regarded professional qualifications to spend time and money. There are hundreds of different professional qualifications in the UK. I personally would choose those professional bodies established by Royal Charter, such as Chartered Institute of Bankers, Chartered Institute of Management Accountants, Chartered Institute of Marketing, The Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators, etc....... The professional qualifications offered through the Chartered bodies are high quality and are generally regarded as equivalent to the first degree by the UK universities.