Drawing from extensive experience as community educators, this paper discusses accreditation and its relationship to community development as informed by a cooperative inquiry conducted by tutors. Beginning with our rationale for undertaking the inquiry, it details our approach to community development and the centrality of education within this. It offers a review of some literature pertinent to both concepts before presenting findings from the inquiry itself. It concludes by emphasising the positive features of the awarding of credits for set-learning periods but expresses concern about difficulties with contemporary models of practice including a degree of discordance between accreditation and education for social change.