ISO 29990 withdrawn: what to do today, and why ISO 29993 replaces it

For years, ISO 29990 was the international reference for learning providers: published in 2010, it defined “basic requirements” for providers of learning services outside formal education. If you look for it today, you will find it has been withdrawn. No cause for alarm, and no normative vacuum either: its two components now live in two separate standards. Here is what happened — and above all, what to do today instead.

What ISO 29990 was, and why it was withdrawn

ISO 29990 had one peculiarity: it mixed two registers of requirements. On one side, requirements on the learning service — what the learner receives: information, needs analysis, design, delivery, assessment. On the other, requirements on the provider’s management — how the organisation runs itself.

This dual register, convenient on the surface, created an ambiguity: it was never quite clear whether the standard attested the quality of a service or the solidity of an organisation. International standardisation settled the matter by separating the two objects:

• ISO 29993, published in 2017 (“Learning services outside formal education — Service requirements”), took over the service component;
• ISO 21001 took over the management-system component, adapted to education and training organisations.

ISO 29990 was then withdrawn from the catalogue of standards in force. The lineage is therefore clear: not a disappearance, but a split.

What this withdrawal changes for you in practice

If you were ISO 29990 certified: a certification based on a withdrawn standard gradually loses its practical value — buyers who used to check that reference now look to the standards that replaced it. There is no point “maintaining” a defunct framework; put the energy into the switch.

If a tender or client still mentions ISO 29990: it happens, through documentary inertia. The right response is to explain the split and present the standard that covers what the client is actually looking for — the service or the management.

If you are discovering the subject today: do not invest a minute in studying ISO 29990. Start directly from the standards in force.

Choosing your path: service, management, or both

The question to ask yourself is simple: what do you want attested?

You want to attest…	Standard in force	Object assessed
The quality of the service delivered to the learner	ISO 29993	The service: information, needs, design, delivery, assessment
The solidity of your organisation	ISO 21001	The organisation’s management system
Both	Both standards, separately	Two complementary assessments

For the service component — our subject here —, ISO 29993 follows the service across its whole life cycle, with transparency towards the learner and the sponsor as its guiding thread. Our detailed guide to the ISO 29993 service requirements lays out the full grid. To place the management component, see the ISO 21001 overview.

Many former ISO 29990 holders find they only ever needed one of the two components: the split is an opportunity to pay only for what genuinely serves your strategy.

The switch in practice: build on what you have

Good news for former certificate holders: the work done for ISO 29990 is not lost. The evidence you built — needs-analysis templates, design files, assessment schemes — remains the foundation for compliance with ISO 29993. The typical path:

1. Obtain the text of ISO 29993 and read it in full — the requirements have their own wording; do not assume equivalence with your old practices.
2. Map what you have: for each service requirement, identify what your legacy system already covers, partially or not at all.
3. Close the gaps at the level of each concrete service — that is where the standard looks, more than at general processes.
4. Have conformity assessed by a third-party body (in France, certifiers such as AFNOR Certification or Bureau Veritas offer this type of assessment), then maintain it through follow-up assessments.

This phenomenon of switching between frameworks is nothing unusual: management research shows that management standards and their sector variants live, evolve and get replaced, and that the value organisations derive depends above all on how deeply practices are adopted — not on the logo displayed. The literature review by Iñaki Heras-Saizarbitoria and Olivier Boiral, published in 2013 in the International Journal of Management Reviews, highlights the persistent gap between formal adoption of a framework and real transformation of internal practices (Heras-Saizarbitoria & Boiral, 2013). In other words: if your ISO 29990 effort genuinely transformed your practices, the switch will be quick; if it stayed on paper, now is the time to do better.

And where does Qualiopi fit in?

An essential reminder for French organisations: neither ISO 29990 yesterday nor ISO 29993 today has ever opened access to France’s public and pooled training funds. That access runs solely through Qualiopi. The two approaches complement each other — one for funding, the other for differentiation — as detailed in our comparison ISO 29993 vs. Qualiopi.

Take action

Former ISO 29990 holder or newcomer to the subject: the complete ISO 29993 overview gives you the scope of the scheme in force, its steps and how it fits with Qualiopi, along with our free guide to preparing compliance step by step. It is the shortest route from a defunct framework to an up-to-date approach.