DipFD Direct Entry Route Northern Ireland

Welcome to the NAFD Funeral Directing Direct Entry Route, which is the fast-track route for registration to the Level 4 NAFD Higher Diploma in Funeral Directing.

The aim of the Direct Entry Route is to provide education opportunities to long serving funeral professionals with extensive experience but no formal prior qualifications. The Direct Entry Route now enables those individuals to register for the Level 4 NAFD Higher Diploma in Funeral Directing without the need to complete a precursor qualification or training programme, providing they can prove their competence and knowledge of funeral arranging in the integrated assessment process.

Through the Direct Entry Route, the current competence of funeral individuals is assessed through an online pre-qualifying assessment aimed at testing the current knowledge and understanding of legislation and practice associated with arranging a funeral.

In addition, individuals will be required to complete an online application form with a series of experience-based questions, provide evidence of arranging and / or conducting 75 funerals over a 5-year period, a copy of their CV and two written references. As the final part of the process you will be required to complete a professional discussion with an NAFD Examiner.  Scheduled dates for the professional discussions for 2024 are:

16th April 2024, 26th June 2024, 10th or 11th September 2024, 19th November 2024

Individuals are not permitted to register or commence studies on the L4 DipFD until they have successfully completed all elements of the Direct Entry Route and received written confirmation of their DER results directly from the NAFD.

The Direct Entry Route is not applicable to individuals who have successfully completed the NAFD DipFAA or online NAFD FAA Certificate. Providing you can produce evidence of completing any of these courses, you can register directly for the Level 4 NAFD Higher Diploma in Funeral Directing.

Please select this course if you are working in Northern Ireland.

Please remember: If you haven’t already registered for the website, you need to create an account before you checkout and pay for the Direct Entry Route. Click on the Register button to complete registration.  When purchasing, only one registration can be purchased at a time and registration must be completed under the account of the student taking the course, not under an Employer account.

When purchasing this NAFD course, if you are employed by an NAFD member firm you will be eligible for the reduced course registration rate. On completing the registration page and proceeding to the checkout, if you do not see the reduced rate as an NAFD member, you will need to login to your profile via the Learning Zone and update your details with your correct NAFD membership number. Once you have inputted your NAFD membership number you need to click on Save Changes in the bottom right hand corner of the screen. You then need to sign out of your account and sign back in again for the update to complete.

IMPORTANT NOTE: PLEASE ONLY PURCHASE ONE DIRECT ENTRY ROUTE REGISTRATION AT A TIME, AS IT IS LINKED TO EACH INDIVIDUAL STUDENT. WE CANNOT ACCEPT MULTIPLE REGISTRATIONS ON ONE ORDER, IF THIS HAPPENS YOUR ORDER WILL BE CANCELLED.