You can start the course at any time: today, tomorrow or next month. Whenever is best for you

You can study at home, or wherever you want. The course does not involve you being in a classroom or going to a test centre

Many students complete the course in five months. But you can do it as quickly or slowly as you want. That's one advantage of distance learning.

You will have permanent access to the course. You will have a year to complete your Assignments and ICMA tests. 

You are allocated a dedicated support advisor for your course. 

The advisor marks your first and final assignments, and helps you with any problems. 

You can phone your course advisor at the Blackford Centre at any time during work hours. If you leave a message out of work hours, we'll ring you back the next working day. You can also contact us via email on: [email protected].

You can find the cost of the course by clicking 'Fees and Registration' in the grey menu.

Yes. You can pay monthly for the course. There is no extra charge. You can find the cost of paying by instalments by clicking 'Fees and Registration', and then 'Pay Monthly'.

There are no other costs or fees

Yes. Just let us know within 60 days of receiving it, and return it in good condition (if you have the printed edition), and we'll send you a full refund. 

Please note however that a refund cannot be processed if you have been signed off as complete and issued your Diploma Certificate. 

No, there is no final exam. The course is based on continuous assessment, using marked assignments and Interactive Computer Marked Assessments (ICMAs).  Continuous assessment lets you check all the time that you're on course to succeed. So you should look at the assignment as an exciting challenge. No, it's true! You'll enjoy them. We promise you!

You do the work again! 80% of students complete the course without ever failing an assignment. But you might misunderstand the question, or produce an insufficiently detailed answer. If this happens, with your marked assignments your advisor will explain the problem and ask you to complete the assignment again. With the ICMA's, you can simply re--try the test when you are ready.  

We advise writing up assignments on a Word Processor, and uploading this to the portal. This is because typically it is the quickest and most direct way to get your work marked, with no additional postage cost. However, we appreciate that every student is different, and if you would prefer to handwrite your assignments, we do allow this.

We ask students to upload their assignments to our portal directly, but upon request we can accept work submitted this way. 

Yes, you can.

We advise working through the course in order, but this is not a requirement. 

So, if you want to tackle a particular topic, you can go straight to that module. This is useful if you have a job or a client that requires you to know about a particular subject. You might note that some other organisations supply only one or two modules at a time.

We send you the whole course when you enrol. This means you can study any topic you want to. You can also see what topics are coming up. Getting everything in one package makes it easier for you to get an overview of the course. As we mentioned above, some other organisations supply only one or two modules at a time.

We think this is the best course in the world. Bar none. But please examine other courses before making a decision. Consider these points:

1. Is the course comprehensive?

2. Is it interactive? That is, do the course materials regularly make you stop and think, and do exercises? Too many courses consist of page after page of boring lecture notes.

3. Does it teach you about setting up your own business? College courses are often weak on this point.

4. Can you get a refund if you don't like the course?

For our course, the answer to all these questions is 'Yes'. But check out other courses as well before enrolling. We want to you make the choice that's right for you.

Yes. We can recommend brokers or insurance companies in the UK who will give you professional liability insurance.

Yes. The course is designed specifically to help you set up and run your own practice. Some courses, even at university, seem to omit this all-important aspect. We give you enough technical knowledge to practice, and we also provide detailed guidance on marketing, operation and finance to run your own business.

To get a job in a public or private organisation, you'll need more qualifications than we can offer. Our course is designed to help you work as self employed, with your own private clients. The easiest way to earn a living is to work for yourself. It's also the most lucrative. So in the course we focus on how you can work from home.

Yes, the course includes practical guidance on finding clients for your own private practice.

The course uses natural products to create the recipes. It is not directly designed to be vegan, but the vast majority of the recipes are vegan friendly, as we focus on using plant extracts.

The only recipe we include that may not suit those who are vegan, is a ‘Lavender Sweet Dreams’ bar, included in module 3, which uses beeswax. Some Vegans will use this product, while others may not.

Of the ingredients we discuss in the course, we may include some that not vegan based, but often there are alternatives available on the market. For example, at one point we discuss the use of yoghurt. You could use a vegan yoghurt in this case, such as yoghurt made with almond milk.

The course assignments ask you to create the recipes included in the course, so you would need to make the lavender sweet dreams bar. However, aside from this, we teach students how to create their own products, so you would be able to create products with your own choice of ingredients, allowing you to focus directly on vegan products.

The course includes a section on Ethics, so we discuss ingredient use and sources as a part of the course. You can see a full list of what we cover in the course here: https://inst.org/natural-skincare-courses/syllabus

Yes. We have students in 28 countries.

Yes. Please talk to us about how we can accommodate you. We're able to make suitable accommodations.

You don’t need any specific qualifications or experience. You just need the motivation to succeed.

• Don't worry. We understand. But this course is nothing like your memories of being stuck inside a stuffy classroom on a summer's day with an old-fashioned teacher droning on.
• For a start, this is a subject that interests you (or you wouldn't have got this far).
• And getting this deep into the website shows that you can absorb information and concentrate for long periods of time.
• Also, you'll see that we write clearly and simply. And that's how we've written the course materials. It's true that some organisations write long and boring pages that make your eyes glaze over. We promise you that our course is nothing like that. You'll find this course is informative and enjoyable. In fact, many students are almost upset at finishing the course.

When you start comparing us with other course providers you might notice that:

• Some organisations will only give you 7 days to return your course if it’s not right for you. If our course is not what you expected and you want a full refund we allow you 60 days to return it and claim your money back.
• Some organisations will charge you an administration fee to return the course. We refund all of your fees.
• Many of our courses include details on business, marketing and finance, or finding a job (as applicable). This is something other courses tend to miss out. 

Here are some answers we hope will reassure you.

We've been in operation since 1995; so we're very established.

We publish our physical address at the bottom of each page - and you are welcome to visit us.

We’re audited yearly by The Quality Licence Scheme. The Quality Licence Scheme is part of the Skills and Education Group, who are a national awarding organisation. (You can phone them to verify that).

You can read the Reviews of our students on the web site.

We publish an Ethical statement here

We're registered at Companies House: registration number 352 4886

Our VAT number is 729 1528 23

Our bank is NatWest, 7 High Street, Wells, Somerset (we have money in the bank and no loans or overdraft).

We're registered with the UK government's Register of Learning Providers (www.ukrlp.co.uk); Number 10009490.

And finally, we love what we do; and we wouldn't do anything to jeopardise it.