Research methodology

Workflow

1. Discover a provider with searches by subject and destination, including local-language searches, official school sites, course catalogues, awarding-body centre directories and government school registers. Directories, rankings, review sites and keyword lists are used for discovery only; they never verify a fact.
2. Establish identity, the actual teaching address (or online delivery) and that the provider is operating. A salon that offers services is not a school: it is listed only with a structured course. Product-only businesses, unstructured demonstrations and inactive providers are excluded.
3. Record each fact from an official page with the exact URL and a short verbatim quote. Prices keep their original currency, basis, period and what they include.
4. Verify: a script re-fetches each source and checks the quote. Facts whose quote cannot be found are withheld, and recognition is downgraded. Sites that block automated access are not bypassed; they are recorded as unreachable.
5. Review and date: every record carries its last-checked date. Records not rechecked for six months are flagged as due for verification.

Missing information

An eligible, verified school or course is listed even when tuition, entry requirements or other optional details are not published. Missing information is shown as “not published”: it never means free tuition, closed admission or unavailable accommodation. We say plainly when current enrollment availability is not confirmed.

Providers, locations and courses

A school group is separate from its campuses, and a reusable course is separate from dated sessions. Online courses are never attached to a location, and an online provider is never shown with a local office. Alternate names, tracking URLs and repeated keyword phrases never create duplicate listings.

Qualifications and recognition

Attendance certificates, assessed provider certificates, externally awarded vocational qualifications, diplomas and academic degrees are different things and are labelled as such, as are continuing-education credit and professional licences. Recognition is recorded per campus and course with its own scope and date: school authorization, institutional accreditation, awarding-body approval, course endorsement, association membership, insurance-related claims and licensing eligibility are kept apart. A recognition is shown as “verified” only when an official register or document we fetched lists it. See qualifications explained.

Medical esthetics and permanent makeup

Training involving needles, lasers, injectables, prescription products or other invasive work is published only with its intended audience, prerequisites, jurisdiction and scope. If those cannot be established, the record is held for review rather than presented as beginner training. We describe educational pathways, not treatments.

Duration bands

Short-term means under six calendar months and long-term means six months or longer. These are browsing labels, not official qualification levels. Elapsed duration, contact hours, practical hours, session frequency and online access period are recorded separately.

Costs and funding

Tuition, registration, kit, consumables, uniform, assessment, awarding-body and optional licensing costs are separate. We do not convert currencies, rank by price or call anything “cheapest”, and an instalment is never presented as a total. Financial assistance appears only when confirmed for the specific course.

Shortlists

The Best Schools pages are editorial shortlists built from stated criteria and cited sources. They are unranked because a numerical ranking is not defensible with the evidence available. They state what was considered and their limitations, show the review date, and are independent of sponsorship.

What we do not do

• We do not invent schools, qualifications, recognition, tuition, kit contents, funding, outcomes, reviews, endorsements or partnerships.
• We do not infer a school’s ownership, ethnicity or expertise from its name or photographs, or its teaching language from its website language.
• We do not claim to be exhaustive. Coverage and gaps are published in the research register.
• We do not promise employment, income, licensing, insurance eligibility or visas.

To report an error see corrections.