Cycle training and courses: who runs them, and what they cover.

Every other page in this section reports figures and rules. This one points the other way: to the people and programmes that teach riding. It names schemes and the bodies behind them; it does not recommend any provider, club or coach, and it does not summarise what is taught.

United Kingdom: the National Standard and Bikeability

The National Standard for Cycle Training

The Department for Transport's National Standard for Cycle Training (June 2018) describes itself as a statement of competent cycling and of cycling instruction. It says it is a guide to cycling well, not a compulsory step before anyone may cycle, and that it is the basis for programmes including Bikeability. It is not itself the Bikeability programme: advice on delivery and ratios sits in a separate Bikeability Delivery Guide for training providers. It is built around six roles, the sixth being the delivery of cycle training itself, which instructor training covers.

Bikeability

The National Standard defines three Bikeability levels, taken in order (local authorities such as Bromley and Lincolnshire state that each must be completed before the next):

The Standard also names Bikeability Plus modules, including Balance, Learn to Ride and Fix. Cycling UK, a cycling charity, describes Bikeability as a training programme for school children, funded by the Department for Transport and based on the National Standard, with Level 3 offered to secondary school pupils.

Who runs it. The Bikeability Trust, a charity, runs and promotes Bikeability on behalf of Active Travel England and the Department for Transport, and gives 2007 as the programme's start. Staffordshire County Council, for example, says its school training is funded by Active Travel England through the Trust.

How many take part (the Trust's own figures). The Trust said a record 560,471 children took Bikeability in England between April 2023 and March 2024, 310,374 of them completing Level 2 (22 July 2024). It said 500,000 training places were booked in England in 2024-25 (6 August 2025); that counts places booked rather than children trained, so the two years are not like for like. A search summary of its 2026 statistics sheet gives more than 6 million children trained since 2007. The first two figures are for England, not UK totals.

British Cycling: coaches and ride leaders

The descriptions below come from search summaries of British Cycling's pages and are not confirmed against the pages themselves.

• Level 1 Certificate in Coaching Cycling: the first step of its coach education programme, qualifying holders to deliver pre-prepared sessions to groups.
• Level 2: qualifies coaches to plan and deliver a series of sessions for beginner and intermediate riders, with discipline awards including road and time trial, track, cycle speedway, mountain bike, BMX and cyclo-cross.
• Level 3: covers periodised training programmes for individual riders.
• Ride Leadership Award Level 1: a one-day award qualifying volunteers to lead guided rides for beginner and intermediate adults, used in Breeze, British Cycling's women-only volunteer scheme.

For its insurance, British Cycling's list of recognised qualifications requires holders to be members, to live in the UK and to hold a current first aid certificate.

Canada: CAN-BIKE

Cycling Canada describes CAN-BIKE as its cycling safety programme, with the mission of providing effective cycling skills and education for all road users. Cycling Canada owns the curriculum and sets delivery standards; certified local instructors deliver the courses, independently or through municipal and local bodies, and Cycling Canada keeps records of instructors and graduates. Its course list runs from a Level 1 course for all ages, including people who have never ridden, through commuter skills and a Level 3 course that includes children aged 9 to 14 who must ride on the road, to a Level 4 course for experienced riders and adults in leadership roles. Children's, women-only, rural and learn-to-ride courses are also offered.

Level 5 is instructor training, taken after Level 4. Cycling Canada's course page gives it as 24 hours; another listing, read from a search summary, gives 12 hours.

Australia: Ride Nation Schools

AusCycling describes Ride Nation Schools as a bike education programme that builds young people's riding skills and confidence, launched in 2015. It reported 5,000 participants in Term 4 of 2020, 20 percent more than any earlier term, across six states (25 November 2020).

United States: League Cycling Instructors

The League of American Bicyclists, a national advocacy non-profit rather than a government body, certifies League Cycling Instructors to teach its Smart Cycling curriculum to adults and children and to teach motorists to share the road. Its 2025 description says candidates must first pass its Smart Cycling Complete Course with 85 percent or more, then attend a seminar of about 24 hours over one evening and two full days, about a third of it on the bike. We found no federal US youth training scheme comparable to Bikeability, only training from advocacy groups, cities and schools, but we could not confirm that no such scheme exists.

More on how people learn to ride, and on the National Standard's levels, is on learning to ride. What the road rules say is on road rules for cyclists.