Fees and how to pay

What a qualification costs, when the money is actually due, and what your options are for paying it. If you are still deciding, the important line is the first one below: applying costs nothing and commits you to nothing.

Nothing is paid at application

There is no application fee, no deposit to hold a place and no card details taken on the application form. You apply, we review your application, and if we can offer you a place we make an offer. Payment only becomes relevant once you have accepted that offer, and we talk you through the options before you do. If we do not think the qualification you applied for is the right one for you, we say so and suggest the one that is, which is something our registration policy requires of us rather than a courtesy.

What it costs

The fee is published on the page of every qualification that is open for enrolment. There is one fee per qualification and it covers your registration with NCFE, the taught material and live sessions, assessment by a qualified assessor, internal and external quality assurance, tutor support, and the certificate claim when you finish. There is no separate assessment fee, no charge for feedback and no charge for a resubmission within your qualification. The published fee is the whole fee and nothing is added to it at checkout. We are not registered for VAT, so no VAT is added either.

Current range: fees for the 26 qualifications open for enrolment run from £295 to £3,495. The figure that matters is the one on the page of the qualification you want, and each of them shows it.

See the qualifications and their fees

Paying in full, or spreading the cost

Once you accept an offer you choose how to pay. Payment is taken through Stripe, and the amounts are worked out from the fee for your qualification rather than quoted separately.

Pay in full. A single payment with 5% off the published fee. On a £295 fee that is £280.25, so you pay £14.75 less than the published price.

Spread the cost with Klarna. Three interest-free payments, chosen on the secure payment screen, on any qualification up to £2,000. The discount above still applies, so on a £295 fee that is about £93.42 a payment. Klarna is available to UK residents aged 18 and over, subject to Klarna's approval and terms, and missed payments can affect your credit score.

Monthly instalments on our Level 4 and Level 5 diplomas. Those fees sit above Klarna's limit, so we run our own plan on them instead: 3 equal monthly payments at the published fee, with no interest and no credit agreement. On a £2,995 fee that is £998.33 a month. The payments stop automatically after the third, so there is no rolling subscription to remember to cancel.

The worked example above uses a £295 fee. Your own figures are calculated from the fee for your qualification and shown to you in full, plan by plan, before you enter any card details.

If paying by card does not work for you, we accept a bank transfer. Choose that option when you accept your offer, or tell the admissions team, and we will send you our bank details along with the reference to quote. A member of staff confirms the money against the account, and your enrolment completes from that point exactly as it would if you had paid by card. Cash is possible by arrangement at our office, but please ring first: we cannot accept cash paid in at a bank or Post Office.

How you can pay when you enrol.

Pay by Bank

Klarna lets you split the cost into 3 interest-free payments. 18+ and UK residents, subject to Klarna's approval and terms. Missed payments can affect your credit score.

If your employer is paying

Employer-funded enrolment is common on the technical qualifications, and the obstacle is almost never the money. It is that the person who has to approve it needs something in writing that explains what the qualification is, what it covers and what it costs.

So every qualification page carries a business case you can download and send on. It is generated from the qualification's own data: the units, the level, the awarding organisation, the fee and how the assessment works. Nothing in it is a claim about salaries or promotions, because we do not make those claims and a document that did would not survive scrutiny by the person you are sending it to.

How employer payment works in practice: you apply in the normal way and tell us, at application or when you accept your offer, that your employer is funding you. We then deal with them directly, so you are not paying out of your own pocket and reclaiming it. If their finance team needs an invoice, we raise one and send it to whoever they nominate, payable within 30 days and quoting their purchase order number if they use one. Your place is held while it is settled. A member of staff confirms the payment when it arrives, and your enrolment completes from that point exactly as it would if you had paid by card.

You do not have to arrange any of that yourself. Tell us who to contact in their finance team and what details they need on the invoice, and we will deal with them. Nothing is charged to you, and nothing you have to pay back.

If you are the employer and you are looking at more than one member of staff, contact us before applying individually and we will work out the most sensible way to run it.

Talk to us about employer funding

Government funding and Advanced Learner Loans

We do not offer a government-funded route, and that includes the Advanced Learner Loan: we are not a registered Advanced Learner Loan provider, so we cannot arrange one for any of our qualifications. Our qualifications are paid for by you or by your employer, and we would rather say that plainly on this page than let you find out at the point of payment. If your circumstances mean funded provision is what you need, a local college or an adult education provider is the right place to ask, and we will say so if you call us.

What happens after you pay

Payment is the last step of enrolment rather than the first. Once it clears, your access to the virtual learning environment is set up, you are registered with NCFE on the correct qualification and units, and you complete the online induction before you begin any assessed work. You need a Unique Learner Number for the registration, and if you do not have one we help you obtain it through the Learning Records Service.

Withdrawal, credit transfer and what happens to your record if you stop partway through are set out in DAIS-POL-014. Your legal right to cancel, and the model cancellation form, are set out in full on our cancellation rights page. The same notice is shown to you on the payment page before you pay, so you read the terms themselves before you are committed rather than a summary here.

Ask before you apply

If anything about the cost is unclear, ask first. Call +44 207 0990 956 between 9am and 6pm Monday to Friday, or email info@dataaischool.com, and we aim to reply within two working days. You can also read how assessment works, which covers what the fee is actually buying.

Before you pay anyone for a course, ours included, it is worth five minutes checking that the qualification is genuinely regulated and that the fee is fairly priced. We wrote how to check a qualification is real for exactly that, and it applies to us as much as to anybody else.

Start an application