Graduate Upgrade
Why Upgrade?
FNTP graduates who previously received a certification before 2020 can upgrade their credentials to the current Practitioner-level program (equivalent to a diploma level). This qualification is recognised in Australia by the Australian Committee of Complementary Therapies for TGA Exemption status, and is internationally accredited through IPHM.
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The upgrade will involve current curriculum review and course work to catch-up certification students to the current 1200 contact hour requirement. Clinical hours requirements are dependent on graduating year and location.
Upgraders should expect to contribute 10-15 hours of course work and zoom call attendance per week when completing the upgrade as a Mentor.
If you do not wish to be a mentor or you are a USA trained NTP, you can re-enroll as a student at a reduced re-entry fee of $7,222 AUD. This fee can broken into a payment plan if required. Should you wish to re-enroll please advise our team which class you wish to enroll in and we will provide you the appropriate enrolment forms.
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The upgrade is designed to be completed in one class cycle, either as a Mentor or as a reduced re-entry student.
Allowances can be made with your Lead Instructor to complete the upgrade over additional cohorts if required. This will be on a case by case basis.
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To apply for an upgrade, you need to email NTA Australia with the details of which graduating class you were in & your lead Instructor.
The upgrade assessment process incurs a non refundable administration fee of $125.00 AUD.
Our team will send you through an invoice for the admin fee, and will start the assessment once this is paid.
We will review your grade book and assess which additional modules and/or content you would be required to complete to attain the standards required for the Practitioner qualification.
You will be provided with the following details:
Number of outstanding hours including any updated FCA hours required (if relevant)
Required modules to be completed
Process to completion and assessment.
You will be provided with a complete breakdown of this information and options available to you for completing this upgrade.
Every graduate is being individually assessed so once payment has been completed we will pull your grade books and begin the assessment. You can expect to hear back from our team within 3 business days.
Upgrade FAQs
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The Practitioner of Functional Nutritional Therapy program is the same program that was previously the Diploma program. Its core curriculum, clinical seat hours, and professional memberships available to graduates is exactly the same.
The Australian government has recently moved to reserve the word “Diploma” solely for government funded programs. NTA AU/NZ is proud to continue to remain one of the few independently funded ancestral based health organisations in the country.
Despite the change, our professional bodies still look to clinical seat hours and curriculum depth for their recognition. The Practitioner of Functional Nutritional Therapy program satisfies these requirements.
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As there have been updates across all core curriculum modules and there are now client consultation videos for every module, yes it’s a considerable upgrade. However, we are actually not asking you to do every assignment that a student does - you are not required to do Original Content assignments, Capstone Project presentations, quizzes, exams or Additional Reading Assignments that are expected of current classes.
We understand it seems like a lot but there has been significant updates for the program to be recognised at this level. The Practitioner program will qualify our graduates as health Professionals it means they will be open to audits and follow ups from the Office of the Health Ombudsman should they ever receive a client complaint, therefore this is to protect our graduates as well as the organizations that have qualified you for TGA exemption status.
In order to provide you with a transcript that reflects you have achieved the requirements of our current level of training that is now recognized for the Practitioner program we do need to have some proof that you have reviewed all the changes. We believe you will find, because of your post graduate experience this will be far easier than it is for our students.
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You may continue to work on this across an entire class cycle and should you need to continue across one more class cycle we would be happy to accommodate. Should you wish to defer the upgrade for now, you may revisit this at another time however we are unable to guarantee that there may not be further revisions and updates to the curriculum that you may need to be assessed for.
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Your options would be to either defer (see above) or apply for a limited re-enrollment to complete the upgrade. Please note limited re-enrollments will incur a reduced re-entry fee of $7,222 AUD, which can be broken into a payment plan if required.
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We have made significant changes to the Group Leader (now Mentor) role since you were a student. Students are now paired with Mentors throughout the program instead of other students and they work through various aspects together - learning together. It’s been really wonderful and we’ve had great feedback from both students and mentors.
The Covid Era was an opportunity for us to think outside of the box and we have overhauled workshops as a result. We teach all theory, demo -ing and audible instruction online and get everyone to start their clinical skillset practice before workshop. This has allowed us to really reduce the workshop load and make weekends more like relaxed practice sessions.
Due to the ongoing economic impact since that time still occurring in various countries, we have created a hybrid workshop format that in conjunction with the prep work, the students are actually learning faster and more comprehensively than the previous method.
