ITEC, after promoting its international Level 3 Diploma in Reiki as having UK accreditation, has now been contacted by Skills for Health and told to take down the claim. ITEC have been told to remove the statement on their website that the course had "UK Accreditation: QCA 500/3251/3 Level 3" because it didn't. As of this morning, it has been removed.
This is the course that apparently is able to assess students showing "basic energy sensing skills" manipulating that undetectable healing energy that Reiki practitioners claim to be able to channel into their patients.
The UK variety of the course makes no mention of such skills, nor indeed anything much about Reiki at all. It's still called a Diploma in Reiki but given its syllabus, the only thing that seems to relate it to Reiki is the subjective assessment during some observation sessions, all sufficiently vague to allow anyone to teach pretty much what they like.
But the good thing is that, given a little persistence, we can put a bit of pressure on the organisations promoting these courses to pay attention to the evidence base. Skills for Health initially responded to my enquiries with a very cursory and unhelpful response but after I pursued it, their response improved. ITEC themselves sent me to Ofqual and QCDA, which sent me to Skills for Health, who initially referred me back to ITEC, the classic run-around.
It is clear that ITEC wanted to show their diploma had academic approval in the UK when it didn't. They claimed accreditation when it didn't have it. And now they've taken it down from their website. The international diploma course is still there, and still taught in some institutions in the UK, and youngsters will still see it advertised as a potential career path.
But its a small victory and the more of these we get, the more we can push back against irrationality creeping into vocational qualifications. Thanks to anyone who did something to help.
Bob Lloyd has studied in four universities and has degrees in Biochemistry, Mathematics, and Computer Science. After a long career in publishing, teaching, and software engineering, he is now retired and lives in Andalucia in the South of Spain with his wife and rather ancient cat.
