Referee Education and Resources

British Fencing is responsible for the Refereeing Syllabus in the UK. The responsibility for running referee courses in the UK is shared between BF and the Home Country Associations.

Referee Qualifications

There are 4 levels of refereeing summarised as follows:

• Level 1 (Club refereeing).
• Level 2  (Local Competition).
• Information on the Level 1 and 2 referee qualification processes can be found here
• Level 3 (National Competition, Pathway level and International EFC competitions). Information on the Level 3 process can be found here.
• Level 4 & FIE  (National Competition and FIE Satellite, Junior World Cup and Grand Prix competitions). Information on the Level 4 exam process can be found here.

The  pre-course reading matter  is a downloadable pdf document.

Referee Courses and Exams

• Upcoming Courses can be found here.
• Upcoming Exams can be found here.

Referee Register

British Fencing is also responsible for maintaining the register of active Referees and their qualifications. You can find the latest referee register and how to become a registered referee here.

Referee Resources

There are also some helpful tools and resources for referees:

• Download, read, know and understand the British Fencing rule app
• Learn the T170 sanctions – the “cheat sheet” for penalties as found on the FIE website.
• Learn the referee hand signals 
• Watch as many international refereeing video clips as possible – the FIE YouTube channel is a good source for this.
• Sign up to badgermille and participate by reviewing and even uploading contentious matches.