Our Syllabus Licencing Service has been a popular service since it’s release in 2014. The service in its full format allows clubs to submit their own syllabus or curriculum for review and certification. This can help add authenticity and peer credibility to any deviations from style specific techniques your club might have introduced.

In addition to the paid-for syllabus licencing service (which is free for all gold members) we allow clubs to use the Syllabi Management Tool completely free of charge and without limit. Here's how it works, and what you can do with it;

We find the difference between good clubs and great clubs often falls on how thoroughly thought-through and well managed the technical curriculum followed is. We know for many clubs this will be a mash-up of traditionally learnt techniques for the instructors, blended with what they know to work best for them 'in the real world' - be that on the mats, in the ring or on the streets. This often leads to deviations between what clubs teach and prioritise, even within the same style.

Our Syllabus Management Platform allows you to manage all of your various Syllabi in one place, with a uniformed approach to structure, governance, version management and so on. It can help to 'prove ownership' (copyright assertion), centralises changes and gives you one place you can keep up to date for official certification, verification and issuance.

The tool is free for all clubs without limit, whilst the full Licencing process (whereby BMABA officially verify the syllabus nationally) and the subsequent availability of on-demand schedules and certification is optional and charged.

Any club can create a new syllabus. Simply press 'Create New Syllabus' and enter the unique name of your curriculum in the box, and press 'Submit'.

Our Syllabus Licencing Platform gives you some powerful 'top level' tools for managing the structure and IP (Intellectual Property) of your club's curriculum. Clicking on the Syllabus tile produces a drop-down, in which you can fill in and update the various bits of information that help you organise your curriculum, and properly document it too.

Remember to always press 'SAVE CHANGES' and await confirmation before moving away. You can refresh your browser once you have this confirmation to see any corresponding updates.

We have created the ability to manage up to 15 grades within our Syllabus Management Tool. This defaults GRADE 1 to being 'White Belt' but you can of course replace this as required.

You have three settings to update and manage for each grade;

Grade Name - This is the designation you give to the grade. It may be Kyu Grades, Gups, Dan Grades, Colour Grades, Levels and so on.

Anticipated Duration - This is also known by our compliance team as 'TSC - Training Standards Compliance' and is a marker of typically how many sessions, on average, you would expect the typical student to require to meet this grade from the last.

This is grade specific - so if each of your colour belts require 12 sessions, you enter 12 for each TSC, not 12, 24, 36 sequentially.

Syllabus Description - This section can be used for the actual techniques, or descriptions thereof, for the relevant grade.

Line breaks and other markers will be maintained, but images and other rich-text isn't supported. You can use the 'expand' indicator at the bottom right corner to expand the text area to show more space for input.

Lots of clubs copy and paste content in from an external club-level document for this section, and that's absolutely fine. Alternatively, you can use this for a direct input of syllabus content.

On refreshing (after saving!) your content, you'll see a visual representation of your curriculum. The Visual timeline shows the full route of ranks, broken up based on the typical sessions required. Each is colour coded based on the rank specified, with stripes shown at the bottom of the box.

Each individual belt section also carries the belt colour to speed up identification. The system can translate most colour based grades, as well as traditional grades, and you can specify stripes too (I.e: Yellow Belt Red Stripe).

Below the timeline we have summarised for you the total chartered sessions required to attain your most senior documented belt, along with how many times training once and twice per week this equates to.

All Licenced Syllabi can use the on-demand document generator to produce one of two documents;

Syllabus Certification

This document confirms that the Syllabus by name is issued and valid, and can be used for formal national verification.

You can then also download a Syllabus Summary Document, which is the formal record of the fully licenced Syllabi;

(etc)

You can at any point submit your Syllabus for formal review.

Click the link next to the Unlicenced Pill Button on your syllabus, or use the link below;

Syllabus reviews are charged at £49.99 as a one-off lifetime charge for initial review and certification. We are able to licence most syllabi, albeit it sometimes with reviews required before completion. Any revisions requested by our team of you, alongside queries over technical aspects of the syllabi will not cost you any extra and there is no deadline for completion.

In terms of naming your syllabus, you can designate it’s name to be anything that is not already in existence in our qualifications and syllabus index. There is, however, one caveat to the ability to name your syllabus freely and this is when you submit a syllabus which shares it’s name with a style.

With this example, we clearly can’t issue a syllabus licence in your name for a syllabus titled ‘Freestyle Karate’ because this undermines the documentation issued. We can’t pass ownership of a style to you, especially as the inherent reason for submitting a syllabus is the deviations or new additions you’ve added to the style you’ve learnt. This particular name would also block any other Freestyle Karate clubs from submitting their curriculums in the future.

If you’ve come to know your own developments to a style as the style itself, you can append or prefix the syllabus name with your club name or initials.

If you’re unsure what to go for in terms of names, please speak with us and we’ll be happy to assist with a gentle steer.

Sometimes having the most directly relevant technical skills our end to review highly complex or bespoke syllabi can be difficult, but we do have a robust and fair way of reviewing each submission;

1.) Submit Your Syllabus

First things first, start by submitting your syllabus online. When you do this, we’ll ask that you’ve made sure everything is fully represented in the single submission.

2.) Internal Standards Review

We’ll start by taking a look at the internal standards around governance and background. This is handled internally only and the committee is not involved in this process. During the standards review we will be looking at the nature of the syllabus, it’s background, application and ethos to ensure it’s in keeping with what we would consider to be a professional or fully-thought out piece of work.

3.) Committee Or Executive Team Review

When we’ve internally reviewed the work we will refer it onto our committee or executive leadership team. They will be invited to vote either in favour of, or against, the licensing of your syllabus based upon their professional opinion of the work. This is an impartial process and the committee won’t know who has submitted the work for review. Within 14 days of submission, the committee will be asked for a vote of confidence, or a vote of no confidence.

4.) Result Comparison

When both an internal review has been conducted and a committee review has been conducted, we’ll compare results.

In order for a syllabus to be successful both the committee must vote with a majority in favour of licensing the syllabus, and the BMABA internal review must vote in favour of backing the syllabus too. Only if both separate parties vote in confidence of your syllabus will we be able to recognise it.

5.) Issue Or Deferral

As per the above, if both parties vote in favour of your syllabus being approved by a majority verdict, we’ll pass and issue your syllabus certification.

If one party votes for, and the other against, the application becomes hung. If this happens, both parties will be asked to look again at the submission and offer a second vote. If this is hung for a second time, we’ll look further into what is causing the mixed-response and raise any questions or queries with you for answering.

If your submission is not successful we’ll offer feedback (where possible) as to why, and will invite you to re-submit your syllabus for review free of charge again in 2 months time.

As part of the review process we ask you to specify the base styles that make up your Syllabus. These are formed from our already insurer-approved list of disciplines and styles. We'll review whether you have sufficient grades and experience in each component style and if approved in terms of Syllabi, you are effectively insured via our group cover policies by virtue of your syllabus already being a part of the pre-approved discipline infrastructure of our cover.

We can't list your syllabus by name on your instructor certification, as this is kept 'pure' for base disciplines and styles only.