Citizens Advice Scotland secures nationally accredited adviser training with Totara

Citizens Advice Scotland solved the challenge of delivering training across 58 independent charities by standardising its Adviser Training Programme on their Totara Platform (CASlearn), ultimately securing formal academic accreditation from Qualifications Scotland.

The Citizens Advice network is Scotland’s leading advice charity, powered by 58 independent member bureaux. As the umbrella organisation, Citizens Advice Scotland delivers strategy, policy, governance, tech support and standardised training. This empowers 3,000+ volunteers and staff to provide thousands of clients with diverse, expert advice annually.

The Challenge

Citizens Advice Scotland (CAS) faced a unique operational challenge: delivering standardised, high-quality learning across 58 independent charities, each operating with its own board, staff, and volunteers.

CAS centrally trains over 3,000 learners across its volunteer-led network.

A key complexity is the diverse demographic of the volunteer base, which ranges in age from 18 to 80 with vastly differing levels of digital literacy.

Advisers in bureau support thousands of citizens annually with urgent, complex issues including debt, benefits, housing and immigration.

Consequently, every adviser must successfully complete the online Adviser Training Programme (ATP), alongside in-bureau service, before being deemed competent to advise the public.

In 2025, CAS sought formal national recognition for its digital training, reflecting its commitment to investing in its dedicated volunteer workforce.

A robust, customisable, highly accessible digital infrastructure was essential to facilitate this critical training.

The accreditation process involved a rigorous audit of CASlearn, focusing heavily on the efficacy of the learning platform, the quality of the ATP training, the veracity of completion data, and the quality of the learner journey.

The Solution

To fulfil the complex accreditation requirements, CAS leveraged the full capabilities of the Totara platform.

It served as the central engine to standardise quality whilst offering user-friendly interfaces to enhance accessibility and lower technical barriers for less tech-familiar volunteers.

The architecture was configured across four key pillars:

• Multi-Tenant Governance: CAS utilised Totara’s native Organisational Framework (Organisation and Position hierarchies) to mirror the physical structure of the 58 distinct bureaux and their sub-offices. Combined with granular reporting permissions, this ensured bureau managers had complete visibility over their specific sites while maintaining strict data privacy across the wider network.
• Role-Based Pathways: Staff and volunteers were mapped using Positions and Roles, allowing the platform to automatically target and provide precise packages of learning based on the user’s specific operational responsibilities.
• Structured Progression: The massive ATP curriculum was bundled into cohesive Programs (ATP 1-4), grouping sets of courses into logical, progressive phases that guided volunteers seamlessly from onboarding to advanced advising.
• Learner Validation: Milestone completions are now validated via automated accredited Certificates for each of the four ATP stages, followed by a Digital Badge, to drive engagement across a diverse demographic.

The Result

In June 2025 Qualifications Scotland officially granted accreditation to the Adviser Training Programme.

This landmark achievement assigns formal academic points and credits to each stage of the programme.

Volunteers can now directly apply these credits toward further education courses, turning mandatory operational training into a tangible, lifelong career asset.

The true business impact of the Totara platform was realised in how its data precision and flexibility solved a massive accreditation challenge:

• Audience-Driven:
  Because the academic accreditation was strictly capped for completions after 1st January 2025, CAS had to segment hundreds of historic users. Using Dynamic Audiences with a ‘completion date of program’ restriction, the platform flawlessly isolated the pre-2025 cohort, ensuring only eligible learners could access the newly accredited certificates.
• The ‘Second Chance’ Lifelong Learning Pathway:
  To ensure no volunteers were left behind, CAS utilised Totara’s Reset Record of Learning feature. Volunteers who completed the training prior to 2025 could reset their ATP records, retake the updated program, and successfully claim their official academic credits.

By outperforming other platforms in customisation, accessibility and engagement, CASlearn has not only secured national academic validation for the Citizens Advice network in Scotland, but has truly “”given something back”” to the volunteer workforce.

The immediate impact of this deployment was staggering.

Proving the efficiency of Totara’s automated audience mapping and certificate generation, more than 50 accredited certificates were successfully downloaded within the first two hours of the news breaking across the network.

COMPLETIONS TO DATE SINCE LAUNCH

• 800 learners accredited — ATP 1
• 587 learners accredited — ATP 2
• 483 learners accredited — ATP 3
• 447 learners accredited — ATP 4

BEFORE & AFTER BENEFIT ANALYSIS

• 2023/24 Baseline: 190 users completed full ATP (Stages 1–4)
• 2025/26 Current: 311 users completed full ATP (Stages 1–4)
• Net Impact: +63% increase in full ATP completions