FAQs

Yes, if you feel you need extra help, this can be arranged by request. You need to be enrolled in one of our online courses, and then as you reach the point of booking a lesson, you can request to book that lesson in-person at a cost of $45 per hour plus GST, additional to your pre-paid online course fees. This additional payment covers your educators' one-on-one time where they would normally have at least 4 students, as well as any additional product required and extras like laundering and cleaning time that wouldn't apply to an online lesson. Before requesting in-person lessons, please check where the mentor closest to you is, as the one-on-one lesson will be held at their own salon.

You can complete your free lesson repeats only after you have completed each lesson in the module once.

We don't have an official minimum but the youngest we have had graduate was 16. Since we don't accept student loans and people use 'real money' to enrol, we usually just give everyone the benefit of the doubt that either they cared enough to work hard and save, or someone believed in them enough to lend them the money. So far this theory has worked out! The only thing we sometimes notice from teens is that they expect a lot more hand-holding than people who've been out of school for a while. As long as you're self motivated and have lots of initiative you will be absolutely fine and will have lots of support from us.

Yes! We can accommodate in-person lessons on a one-on-one basis in the salons of our mentors but most of our classes are now done online. The live lessons are still exactly the same but done via video call, where we can see you and you can see us. The 27 x 3 Hour lessons that are included with the classic Foundation Certificate in Nail Technology are the equivalent of spending 14 consecutive days in a room with us (3 weeks of training). The total number of lessons now depends on what modules you choose to fill the 4 variable spots in the Foundation Certificate enrollment. We've added a LOT of additional online content so that you're familiar with the processes before you log in to a live online lesson. Previously you would turn up and the first time you ever saw a new technique was right before you did it. The current method is producing more confident Nail Techs. Splitting the course into 3-hour blocks has also meant that no one has to take 3 weeks leave to sit in a room and learn everything at once. You CAN book those 81 hours of live lessons into consecutive weeks, but most people choose to spread them out now, to allow time for the information to sink in in-between lessons. We again find this is producing better Nail Techs. If you want to do in-person training, you would enroll in the standard online course, and then book one-on-one lessons with your nearest mentor at an additional cost of $45 plus GST per hour.

This course is taught entirely in English however you are welcome to have an interpreter with you during live lessons (this would be at your own cost). With your Assessments, three out of four of them are practical. The Theory Assessment is done online so that you can take your time, at home in your most comfortable environment. There is a time limit to ensure that you don't just look up every answer but you can also reattempt it up to six times. If that still sounds daunting, you can submit your Theory Assessment orally, with an Educator asking questions out loud in a conversational manner, as if they were a client trying to get advice. You reply in conversation and your Educator will note your score as you go. You can avoid a time limit by agreeing to complete the Assessment in a 'closed book' manner.

The Theory of Nails Assessment is 100% online anyway, so that Assessment is easy. For your Practical Assessments, you will book a time in our Virtual Classroom, which is a video link with an Educator. You set up your phone to show what you're doing and we monitor you while you work. At the end, we get you to angle the client's nails in such a way as we can see all the criteria we are looking for and we mark accordingly. You have your result straight away.  

Enrolling in the Foundation Certificate course is now the new way to enable you to complete the Foundation Certificate with Monaco Nail Academy. You can still enroll module by module, to suit your study needs, but if you choose to study this way, the Certificate we provide you will have space for completing all of the modules we offer. For each module you're enrolled in, you'll need to:

• Complete more than 80% of your course work,
• Complete all portfolio work (if part of the module) and,
• Pass your assessment with a grade of 80% or higher (if that module is assessed)

Upon achieving the above within 12 months of your enrollment date, you will then be eligible to order the sticker associated with the completed module.

This is our highest qualification. The alternative is to study individual topics, sit their relevant exams and get recognition that you've done them. This is totally acceptable if it is enough to achieve your goals, but we would consider you to be a manicurist or similar, not a Nail Technician. Someone with the Foundation Certificate in Nail Technology has in depth knowledge of all areas of Nail Technology, has shown competence and has demonstrated experience. These are the people we recommend for jobs, media work and the like because we know they are the most knowledgeable and experienced.

As soon as you enrol! You are given access to online content within 2 business days of enrolment and can book lessons in as soon as next week.

That's entirely up to you, the full Foundation Certificate has around 65 hours worth of videos, 81 hours of live lessons, supporting texts and then you need to practice. If you committed an 8 hour day each week to the course and spent 3 hours of that day watching videos and 5 hours practicing, it would take 22 weeks to complete the content and then an extra day or two to sit Assessments. Let's call that 6 months. Some people go great guns and finish it in a couple of months, some do it in shorter bursts and take a year, and some set aside a full week every few months and do it that way.

Our most comprehensive course, the Foundation Certificate in Nail Technology, has 27 three-hour live lessons plus additional pre-recorded video content.

Yes-ish - You are required to attend all lessons before the end of your 12 month study period.  

Kind of - throughout each Module, you will see areas where we ask you to submit Portfolio Submissions. These are just photographic evidence of practicing the practical elements of the course.

Sure! Use the Students and Graduates Facebook Group to coordinate this.

Yes. A photographic portfolio is required to be submitted within a year of starting each module. The required photos are outlined in each Module's online workbook.

Your Portfolio is a collection of images of your work, showing us that you have practiced outside of class.

The Portfolio ensures that our students have practiced every technique you were taught in class, at least once, on both hands of a client. This keeps the integrity of our qualification high and ensures Monaco Graduates are Nail techs with experience, not just skill.

When you meet the criteria of the Foundation Certificate of Nail Technology, you will receive a certificate from Monaco Nail Academy. Our certificates are recognised nationwide. We also have graduates working across Australia.

Many of our graduates choose to work from home as an extra income. You can do this, or you can open a salon, apply for salon-based jobs, work on a mobile basis, or freelance on photoshoots and film sets - you could even work on a cruise ship! You will be fully qualified and ready to work - in fact we encourage you to start working on understanding friends and family as you learn each new skill rather than waiting for graduation.

Definitely not. In a recent survey of New Zealand salon owners, 0% of those surveyed said NZQA credits were a priority when employing new staff. When asked specifically to talk about NZQA, salon owners were nonchalant. In fact, I can quote one as replying to the question ‘How do you feel about NZQA’ with ‘Ho hum, really’! It would appear (and we agree) that NZQA isn’t everything. While it’s nice to have NZQA credits on your Record of Learning, not all industries prioritise those credits over all others. In the New Zealand Nail Industry, the quality of your work, variety of skills gained, and your overall attitude rank higher on their wishlists than NZQA credits (which to be honest, don’t actually appear on their wish lists at all.

Absolutely! We have a lot of students with anxiety and/or learning difficulties and still more who are just plain busy. Being able to do the assessment from home made perfect sense. It's 100% online and you will find out immediately if you have passed.

Not quite - requirements differ between city councils. So in Auckland for example you do need to be qualified, but it doesn't need to be NZQA.

You can find links to order your certificates and stickers here.

Three out of Four of the Assessments we require you to pass are practical, and very relaxed. You chat to your client and your friends while completing a full service. It feels like you're just working in a salon. The Theory Assessment is done online so that you can take your time, at home in your most comfortable environment. There is a time limit but you can also reattempt it up to six times. If that still sounds daunting, you can submit your Theory Assessment orally, with an Educator asking questions out loud in a conversational manner, as if they were a client trying to get advice. You reply in conversation and your Educator will note your score as you go. You can avoid a time limit altogether by agreeing to complete the Assessment in a 'closed book' manner.

This is a question we get a lot! Monaco Nail Academy is definitely not 'just' a place for young people and that's one of the things we love about it. The youngest person to Graduate so far was 16 and the oldest 58. At a guess we would say the average age is anywhere between 28-38.

We can't stress enough that this should be a last resort. As per our T&Cs, this can mean in some cases having to pay to make up missed sessions. If you do have to call in sick though, please use the Students and Graduates Facebook Group. We have different educators on different days and all of them work from their own salons so there is no shared phone line. If you post in the Facebook Group, anyone who needs to see it, will. No one wants a PM on their day off. A $90 late-cancellation fee will apply to your lesson.

Yes! We have lots of wonderfully successful graduates from our online programmes. Online students still have live lessons with an educator, it's just on video chat. As an example, teaching in person, I am able to show a student how to move her file 2cm and suddenly get a better result. If we are online, I do the exact same thing, but I show you with my own file on my own hand and then as you mimic my movements I can correct you if needed.

As we are a private training school and not associated with NZQA, we do not accept Student Loans for our courses. However, you can enrol in one module at a time in order to spread out costs and then pay via Humm or LayBuy, both of which allow for interest-free payment plans. Humm's 'Big Things' program allows you to pay off up to $6000 over up to 12 months.

No, but only because we don't have an office or a classroom for you to see. Our team members all work from home in Tairua, Auckland, Tauranga, and Wellington so you would be entering their home, and since the same conversation can be had via a video call (which we're more than happy to accommodate), we choose not to ask our team to open their homes in this way. If you're wanting to see what lessons are like, we highly recommend enrolling in our 2-Week trial. There are also recorded online lessons on our YouTube Channel that you can watch for an idea of what these are like. In-Person lessons are held one-on-one in our team members' own salons (and only by request, at additional cost to our standard online training) so we can't allow you to see one as the student involved has paid for the Mentor's full attention and we respect that.

Click the 'Enrol' link next to the course you're interested in, phone (09) 574 5573 or email [email protected]

ASAP - It's first come first served so when lessons are full they are full. Where there is space, you can enrol right up until 24 hours before a lesson. I would HIGHLY recommend giving yourself at least a week to sort models and cover some of the online content.

We are the sole distributors of Be Creative Nail Art products in New Zealand and import them from the UK, so this brand is the cheapest possible with us. There are 3 distributors of Artistic Nail Design products in New Zealand, including us, but we have a Price Match Guarantee - If you find any of our products available from authorised NZ distributors at a cheaper price, we'll permanently match the price. There are lots of other brands you can choose to use too and we will always give unbiased education so that if you choose not to use the same brands as us, you still have the knowledge to use others. We don't recommend using products or brands that are sold on EBay or other international sites, or that are available to the general public without proof of qualification.  

We supply all product used during in-person classes and so if you choose to seek work in an existing salon after you finish training, you probably won't need to buy anything. If you are studying online or if you choose to set up your own salon from home or commercially, we have recommended Kits for each module (see them here).  

Kits are optional at Monaco - you can add them to your Cart with your Course fees, but you don't HAVE to. We supply all product used during in-person classes, in unlimited quantities. For online lessons you do need to supply your own product but it doesn't have to be product we sell, it just has to be professional-only. Most schools that supply kits expect you to use your own product during class, so although it sounds good that you get a kit, you don't often have much of it left by the end, and you don't necessarily need all of it either (for example we teach forms and tips but you will choose a favourite and focus on that once you finish, so don't need both outside of class). We figure that if we supply all the product in class, it doesn't matter if you use it all up practicing, and then you get to pick and choose what you actually need afterwards. Using our product during class means when you do buy product you make money off all of it instead of using it up on free models. You will get to know what you like and don't like, decide what you need and don't need, and learn how to choose suppliers and product and how to order for yourself - something no one else teaches! It's worth noting that all of this is reflected in our pricing - after you remove kits from the equation and look only at price versus the number of hours of training you get, we are one of the cheapest courses available in New Zealand.  

• Ask your friends and family first – they are more reliable and more likely to be honest with you!
• Go on Facebook and advertise on your local community pages. Search terms such as –
  • ‘Grapevine’
  • ‘Buy Swap Sell’
  • ‘Trade’ or ‘Trading’
  • ‘Pay it Forward’
  • Your/Our suburb or city name
  • ‘Mum’ (for parenting groups, all Mums need pampering!)
• Create a Facebook page and post your work regularly, calling for models each time
• Create a public Facebook event detailing what you need and when. Invite your entire Facebook friends list and encourage your friends to invite their friends by offering a free cuticle oil to anyone who refers a friend.
• Advertise on Neighbourly
• Approach local kindys, schools, women’s gyms and other female-centric businesses and ask to advertise in their mailers or to give a half price appointment once you’re qualified to any one of their staff members who helps out as a model
• Approach the Women’s Refuge or Ronald McDonald House – they definitely deserve pampering!
• Approach Look Good Feel Better and Dress for Success
• Put flyers on Uni Noticeboards and Community Centre Noticeboards
• Ask EVERYONE. The check out girl at Pak n Save might be dying to have her nails done!

Remember you only need one model between 2 students (but you are welcome to work on your own). Pair up with a peer and make plans to share the model-finding responsibilities.

We can definitely help, but this is not something we do regularly. Out of everyone who has ever completed our qualification over the last 10 years, we know of roughly 5 Graduates who have actively looked to work for someone else after qualifying - everyone else chose to work for themselves, either from home, in a commercial space or renting a table in a salon. We can however help you with whichever path you choose. We have had 3 Graduates get employment with Leah Light Nails and Beauty Studios and we also get salons regularly asking us to help them find staff - we post these job opportunities in our Novice/Grads facebook group, which you will get access to after you enrol.

We are acutely aware of the number of people looking for 'product neutral' courses. We do our very best to teach you in the most brand-neutral manner possible, however we have chosen to teach with Artistic Nail Design products as our core system. Through years of experience we have come to regard these as the highest quality, most reliable, and best value products on the market. We have the choice to align ourselves with any brand and choose Artistic. As you gain experience post-graduation you will learn that the application methods of different brands vary greatly, so while there are some courses that claim to be 'brand neutral', you will still be learning with a specific brand and focussing primarily on the methods required for that brand. We will do our best to give you a wide, well-rounded education that can be applied to any brand you wish to use in future. Most brands offer a 1-day 'cross over' course to make sure you understand any differing prep and application steps if you decide to change (although we think you will like Artistic!) Our view is that by starting your career with Artistic Rock Hard products, you're lucky enough to be joining a revolution that we as experienced Nail Techs were very excited about. This is the first time in history that a combined Acrylic and Gel System has been created, both stemming from the same molecule and therefore chemically interchangeable. For us, we came about this post-graduation but for you, you start your career with more knowledge and better products than any of us had access to. Throughout the course you will learn exactly why this is the most exciting development in the industry in YEARS - and why we think it is worth sharing.

We choose to use Artistic Nail Design's Lacquer, Gel Polish, Dipping, Acrylic, Hard Gel and PolyGel Systems during all lessons, combining these base systems with many other brands depending on which product we feel is best for the job. We do sell Artistic products online as well. The application procedures for each brand differ slightly so while we attempt to teach you in the most non-brand specific manner possible, we won't be able to troubleshoot any issues you have with other brands.

All of our courses are online, with remote access to our Mentors, which is how most students complete their training. We do also have in-person Mentors available in Auckland, Tairua, and Wellington. In-Person classes are by request only - you would enrol in the standard online courses we offer, and then request to book lessons in-person at an additional cost of $40 per hour. These lessons are one-on-one and held at the salon of your nearest mentor.  

You are required to have models for most lessons for the most realistic learning experience. You can see exactly when models are required on the Lesson Guide for each Module, found here. It is your responsibility to ensure that the model has reasonable expectations about the service she will receive. Lessons are planned to give you plenty of time to practice but some application methods will be more difficult than others and in some cases you may not complete the full set. A sheet giving tips on finding models can also be found on this page. You are welcome to share models with a fellow student if they are studying the same topic and live in the same area as you. You do one hand each, taking a lot of pressure off your timing. Use the Facebook Group to communicate with other students and coordinate sharing.

Absolutely. When you finish your practical classes, you will have all the knowledge you need, but may still have some practice to do in some practical areas. We work extremely hard to make sure by the time you graduate you do so with an exceptional skill level, evidenced by the exams and portfolio submissions you need to do.

There is definitely enough work out there. Most people work for themselves by choice but if you're wanting to work in a salon that's great - salon owners are starved for staff because so many people want to work from home - good salon workers are hard to find. If you do choose to work from home, again there are plenty of clients to go around, but of course you do have to put in the work to promote yourself.