New Skills Academy is a UK-based e-learning site with hundreds of short, entry-level courses on career and life skills. It also offers a range of coaching programs you can complete in just a few hours.

In this article, we’ll break down what these training programs look like and how students feel about them.

What Is New Skills Academy?

New Skills Academy is an online learning platform that offers courses across various subjects you can take at your own pace, from finance to lifestyle. If you dig deeper, you can even find niche topics like dog-related courses or an international massage diploma.

Its goal is to make picking up skills for your dream job accessible and affordable through flexible courses that include certificates of completion. Most include short video lessons (2-15 hours total) and written materials designed to teach foundational skills or introduce new career paths.

While not as well-known as major platforms like Udemy or Coursera, New Skills Academy has earned recognition for its rapid growth, enrolling over a million students. However, these awards focus more on the company’s success than the depth or quality of its courses.

All programs are CPD-accredited and primarily aimed at students or entry-level professionals looking to gain knowledge in new fields. Individual courses typically cost between $110–$290, or you can access the entire library with an annual membership for $119.

The company’s website highlights mentions in major publications, but independent coverage rarely reviews the courses in depth. Most media attention focuses on the founder, Chris Morgan. The Guardian, for example, covered his personal transformation from gambling addiction to building the New Skills Academy brand.

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New Skills Academy Courses for Life Coaches 

Life coaching certifications have become widely accessible, with a wide range of programs delivered online at a self-paced, affordable price point. New Skills Academy follows a similar model.

You can purchase an individual coaching certificate course for about $120, or you can access the full course library for a year through their premium membership at the same cost.

The platform describes its courses as “expertly designed,” but it provides very little information about who actually creates or teaches them. The About page lists only first names and illustrated avatars for the New Skills Academy team, so it’s difficult to evaluate instructor credentials.

Here’s a closer look at what the coaching course curriculum includes at New Skills Academy.

Life Coaching Certificate Course

New Skills Academy offers a foundational life coaching certificate that takes about 13 hours to complete and costs £100.

If you’re brand new to coaching, this gives you a broad overview of core principles and practical tips to begin working with clients. It covers the GROW model, basic questioning techniques, ethical guidelines, and different coaching styles. The final modules touch on how to find early clients and price your services.

As with all courses on the platform, it’s fully self-paced with no live instruction or peer practice for practical knowledge. You won’t be able to ask questions or apply the tools in real time, but the video lessons provide a basic understanding of coaching in general.

Mindfulness Diploma

New Skills Academy also offers a Mindfulness Diploma at £100 with 11 hours to complete all the modules. This course introduces the core principles of mindfulness and how it supports emotional and physical well-being.

It covers mindfulness meditation, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), and practical ways to apply these approaches. You’ll also explore how mindfulness influences everyday habits, emotional regulation, parenting, leadership, and management.

Professional Body Healing Coach Certificate Course

This course is only 3.5 hours long and costs £100. It takes a holistic approach and discusses the physical, mental, and emotional aspects of well-being.

It includes training videos on nutrition, diet, exercise, and natural remedies. Some lectures also discuss meditation, breathing exercises, mindfulness, and stress management techniques. Additionally, you’ll learn about how the immune system works and what autoimmune disorders are.

The curriculum promises to prepare you to assess and change negative beliefs and habits in clients and to help them become more resilient to stress. It’s an ambitious undertaking for a 3.5-hour course, but it might give you a taster if you’re interested in health coaching.

Spirituality Coach Certificate

The spiritual coach course on New Skills Academy costs £100, and the whole course takes five hours to complete, at your own time.

It focuses on helping people reconnect with their true selves and improving their well-being through spirituality.

The lectures don’t follow a particular religion or spiritual system; instead, they teach different spiritual philosophies and concepts, such as:

• Self-acceptance
• Releasing negativity
• Connecting with the universe
• The purpose of life

Some lectures also discuss practical tools like meditation, breathing techniques, and systems like the chakras and karmic ties.

These foundational modules will help you work with clients to manage stress, transition through life changes, and feel more fulfilled.

Other Certificates for Life Coaches

Besides courses tied to niches, others on New Skills Academy focus on key skills coaches require across specialties. These include:

• Coaching and mentoring skills
• Success habits
• Marketing courses
• Mindful listening
• The science of happiness
• Anxiety awareness

There are also courses related to therapy, such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). Remember, these classes can provide insights into various healing practices, but they don’t qualify you to diagnose and treat people with mental and physical health issues.If you’d like to compare other, more comprehensive and eye-opening course options, explore our full list of free and paid coaching certification programs.

New Skills Academy Reviews

Curated Testimonials

You can find several testimonials curated by the site listed under each course. The ones given by students of the life coaching certificate course highlight that the lectures are easy to follow and well-structured.

Some appreciate the step-by-step structure of the content that suits beginners and the additional modules that discuss business concepts.

Online education is a highly competitive business. New emerging sites in this industry typically gain traction by offering an incentive or encouraging students to write positive reviews. Then these testimonials can be curated on course pages and duplicated on independent review sites.

Let’s dig deeper to see what independent reviewers say about the platform.

Trustpilot: A Mixed Bag

If you look up New Skills Academy on Trustpilot, you can find thousands of 5-star reviews, many praising the ease of accessing courses and the freedom to learn without any time limit.

Some students also highlighted that the content allowed them to explore new career paths. As mentioned, most people taking courses on New Skills Academy are university students and entry-level professionals.

Additionally, a student mentioned that being able to read and watch the modules made it easy to navigate the content.

In contrast, there are some reviews on Trustpilot about the site from students who weren’t so impressed. Several of them mentioned that they expected more from the curriculum based on how it was promoted, and that they could’ve easily found the same information through Google or helpful videos on YouTube.

Beyond the course content, several students raised that the information in the lectures isn’t designed by real-life experts and is read by a computerized voice, making it hard to absorb.

Some made the important point that tangible tools like healing modalities can’t be learned effectively through such a platform. The courses lack practical explanations, demonstrations, and hands-on exercises for proper application.

In addition, more experienced students raised concerns about the accuracy and language of subjects related to human behavior. Here’s a review from a student who took the ADHD course.

TThe lack of neuro-informed language and inaccurate claims here are especially concerning because New Skills Academy attracts thousands of entry-level professionals.

These students are starting new careers in fields where they are expected to work with people who may have deep-seated emotional trauma or special needs. Going into these fields unprepared or misinformed, they may do more harm instead of helping their clients.

While a basic management or Excel course doesn’t carry much risk if poorly designed, the same isn’t true for subjects rooted in social sciences or therapeutic work. Many of the reviews mentioning accuracy issues or confusing language come from students who enrolled in these therapy-adjacent modules.

Another concern is how the platform markets some of these programs as “comprehensive” training that prepares students to practice in these fields. But can a few hours of info dump narrated by a computer-generated voice realistically equip someone to work with clients?

With AI becoming part of everyday life and language models improving rapidly, it’s even harder to justify paying for outdated, surface-level lessons that simply recite information.

Current AI tools can already explain concepts more clearly, adapt to your learning style, and answer follow-up questions in real time. If a course can’t offer more depth, human guidance, or practical experience than what AI now provides for free (and more engagingly), it’s difficult to see the value.

New Skills Academy Courses in the Media

According to a feature published in Schools Week, New Skills Academy has previously used misleading advertising about its classes. It positioned a 15-hour course as training equivalent to an undergraduate degree and suggested that it was a requirement to start a career as a special educational needs teacher.

The piece has also investigated the accuracy of the content and language used in these online courses.

Sara Alston, a special educational needs and disability (SEND) expert with 30 years of experience, has reviewed the teacher assistant courses on the platform. She said they were “written in a way that makes no sense at all and feels deliberately written to make it sound academic,” echoing the disappointed reviews on Trustpilot.

Alston also highlighted that the description of autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) was inaccurate in these courses. Additionally, the content had out-of-date details and referred to people with learning difficulties with inappropriate terms such as “emotional disturbance.”Besides content accuracy, there were also some ethical concerns raised. The courses on New Skills Academy are accredited by an independent appraisal service called IVCAS. However, as the article pointed out, this organization is owned by the same person as the online academy, creating a conflict of interest.

New Skills Academy: Is It Legit?

New Skills Academy has gained quick popularity for its short online courses, but has also received widespread criticism from both its students and the media.

The curated testimonials on the site paint a positive picture of the courses, highlighting the structured lectures, beginner-friendly content, and business modules.

However, independent reviews on sites like Trustpilot raised concerns that the content is superficial, inaccurate, and could easily be replaced with a quick online search.

Many of the issues were raised about the courses related to working with people, such as those about ADHD, special educational needs, and reflexology. Some experts reported instances of inappropriate language and inaccuracies.The coaching-related courses on New Skills Academy may provide an introduction to fundamental coaching concepts, but they aren’t equivalent to hands-on, expert-taught training delivered in comprehensive coaching certification programs.

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FAQ

Is New Skills Academy Legit?

New Skills Academy is an e-learning platform with CPD-accredited online courses. However, several independent reviewers and experts have pointed out accuracy and presentation issues in its quick lectures.

Do You Get a Certificate From New Skills Academy?

Yes. Every completed course comes with a digital certificate, and you can order a printed version for an extra fee.

How Do I Cancel New Skills Academy?

You can cancel your membership by logging into your account and turning off auto-renewal under “My Subscriptions,” or by contacting their customer support team directly.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in May 2024 and has since been updated for accuracy.