UCAS enabling GCSE students to search and apply for post-16 work and education-based training courses – including academic and vocational courses (such as A levels and BTECs), as well as Apprenticeship and Traineeship programmes. The scheme is free for students to use and is implemented as a national service – listing post-16 opportunities from all across the UK. UCAS Progress also helps schools, colleges and local authorities address recruitment issues and statutory obligations resulting from raising the age of participation in secondary education; an initiative which legally obliges students to remain in full-time education or work-based training until the end of
UCAS and in the first year it handled around 140,000 applications to polytechnic courses, of whom 40,000 a year went on to study at polytechnics. Although many polytechnics offered art and design programmes, and some also offered teacher training courses, these admissions systems remained outside PCAS. Art and Design admissions worked to a later timetable as a result of the role Art Foundation courses had in developing a student's proposed specialism (painting, sculpture, graphic design and so on). Work was furthermore generally submitted before a decision was made on whether to interview. However means of absorbing the Art and Design Admissions