Qualified to train?

I saw an interesting article on TrainingZone today - about qualifications in training.

http://www.trainingzone.co.uk/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=188747

I wonder though - do employers check if their trainer has a qualification? To become a teacher you can't even do the PGCE unless you have a degree, but you can end up in a school (and end up teaching!) with no qualification if you start as a classroom assistant.

So is the qualification thing purely related to what they will pay you, or your ability to teach? Now you might be wondering how this relates to training - but surely they are the same?

OK, your employees may not be as malleable as the youth of our nation (and some of them are not malleable, I have to say), but surely you need to consider the qualifications and experience of who you are putting up in front of your people as an example?

Well, qualifications is one way of 'identifying' someone who is - well - qualified! But what about experience? What about knowledge? When you buy management development training are you buying an expert or a great salesperson?

If you go the academic route and get your training from a College (from Ashridge to Cranfield, from your local College to University), you would automatically expect the trainers - those delivering - to be qualified. But if you hire a management development consultancy or independent trainer, do you expect them to be qualified?

Is qualification important, or quality of delivery and the actual outcomes from the training? If you get accredited training (say and ILM or CMI programme), then whoever delivers it you would expect to have been quality audited. But accredited training is only a percentage of management development training delivered in the UK.

In my experience I note good trainers for:

Inspiration (I listened)
Results (I learned something)
Knowledge (I respected and trusted them)

I don't think, personally, I ever asked a trainer if they were qualified to teach me whatever I was with them for.

Do you think qualified trainers make a difference? Answer the poll on the right - I'd be interested to know what you think.