Academy of Barbers St Petersburg

Shkola Akademiya Barberov, the Academy of Barbers, teaches from Nevsky Prospekt in central St Petersburg, close to Ploshchad Alexandra Nevskogo metro, and is open daily from 11:00 to 21:00. It is the training arm of the Barber’s Academy barbershop.

Four programmes run, all priced openly. The beginner course in a group format runs five weeks of training followed by five weeks of internship at 75,000 roubles. The built-in internship is unusual among the Russian schools listed here and worth weighing, since it addresses the gap between finishing a course and being fast enough to work a chair. An individual version of the same course, with a flexible schedule, runs at 95,000 roubles. Two-day courses cover skills upgrading at 22,000 roubles and long-hair cutting at 25,000 roubles. The school claims most graduates start work within a month of finishing, which is a marketing figure rather than a verified one. The certificate is described as international, but no education licence is published.

One point applies to every Russian provider in this directory. The meaningful distinction here is whether a school holds an obrazovatelnaya litsenziya, an education licence. A licensed school can issue a state-recognised udostoverenie o povyshenii kvalifikatsii or a diplom o professionalnoy perepodgotovke, while an unlicensed one can only issue its own certificate. Not one of the schools listed here publishes a licence number. Where you see the words “diplom” or “international certificate” used in their marketing, treat them as in-house documents, because that is what they are.