One accountable partner
Product, platform and consultancy come from one team. There is no hand-off between a tool vendor and a separate evaluator, so no one can say the outcome was someone else’s job.
Services
Product, platform and consultancy in one partnership
We work with universities, medical schools, NHS programmes, schools, trusts, access organisations and funders. Other sectors have easy access to specialist support; admissions leaders often do not. AVA changes that, and students from widening participation backgrounds always use the platform free.
What we offer
Three services, one accountable team
Point solutions help a student practise. AVA is built for institutions that need to change a pathway, prove the change and keep it affordable at scale.
The product students use
Admissions platform
A complete, subject-specific preparation journey: diagnostic onboarding, admissions-test practice, personal statement support, interview simulation and transition resources.
Explore admissions platformMake adoption work, and prove it
Consulting
The consultancy layer is part of the product: cohort definition, staff onboarding, change management, and the evaluation and evidence that proves the programme worked.
Explore consultingBespoke, governed, yours
Custom products built for you
When you need more than the platform, we build it: bespoke tools, data infrastructure and governance designed around your programme and safe for under-18s by design.
Explore custom products built for youOne team
Accountable end to end
Product, platform and consultancy come from a single partner, so no outcome falls between a tool vendor and a separate evaluator.
Specialist
Not a generic chatbot
Subject-specific preparation built on real admissions and marking criteria across medicine, Oxbridge and other high-tariff routes.
Free for WP
Widening participation
Students from widening participation backgrounds always use the platform free, so quality support no longer depends on what a family can pay.
Evidence-honest
Survives due diligence
Baselines and comparators are agreed up front, so evidence language stands up to scrutiny.
Why one partner
Why institutions choose a single partnership
Most admissions support is fragmented: a tool here, a workshop there, an evaluator later. AVA puts the whole thing under one roof so nothing falls between the gaps.
Specialist, not generic
Subject-specific preparation across medicine, Oxbridge and other high-tariff routes, built on real marking criteria rather than a general-purpose chatbot wrapped in a school logo.
Evidence-honest by design
We agree baselines, comparators and outcome definitions up front. Partners get a case that survives scrutiny, not a slide deck of vanity metrics.
What partners tell us
How the partnership feels to work with
“The honesty was disarming. They told us plainly what they could prove today and what would only be provable once the trial reported, which is rare in this market.”
Access lead
Higher education provider
“We have bought tools before that nobody used. The difference here was the change management, staff onboarding and a communications rhythm came as part of the work.”
Widening participation manager
Outreach programme
“Having one accountable partner for the platform, the evaluation and the safeguarding made the governance conversation with our board far simpler.”
Programme director
Access and admissions
Why this work matters
The problem these services are built to address
These are documented, externally published figures on the access and workforce gap, each carrying its source. They set the context, and the services that follow are our response to them.
1.01m6
16 to 24 year-olds are not in education, employment or training, the first time the total has passed one million since 2013.
Explore£125bn7
the estimated cost to the UK each year of nearly one million young people not in education, employment or training.
Explore19.1 months8
the gap in learning between disadvantaged pupils and their peers by the end of secondary school, wider than before the pandemic.
Explore2x9
disadvantaged young people are twice as likely to be out of education, employment or training as their better-off peers.
Explore7x1
more likely to reach Oxbridge if you attend an independent school rather than a state school.
Explore36% vs 6%2
of senior professionals were privately educated, against six per cent of the population.
ExploreCompetition for a medicine place3
Applied to study medicine25,770
Places available~8,100
Applicants compete for a fraction as many places, so preparation decides who clears the bar.
Medical entrants, by background13
Most advantaged group
75%
Lowest socio-economic group
5%
The most advantaged group still fills the large majority of medicine places, which is the gap a partnership exists to narrow.
Sources
- 1Sutton Trust, Access to Advantage.
- 2Sutton Trust, Elitist Britain 2025.
- 3UCAS, Growing demand for higher education.
- 4Medical Schools Council, Selecting for Excellence and contextual admissions.
- 5NHS England, NHS Long Term Workforce Plan.
- 6Office for National Statistics, Young people not in education, employment or training (NEET), UK.
- 7Department for Work and Pensions, Young people and work: interim report.
- 8Education Policy Institute, Annual Report 2025: Disadvantage.
- 9Impetus, Youth Jobs Gap.
- 10Cabinet Office (Panel chaired by Alan Milburn), Unleashing Aspiration: Fair Access to the Professions.
- 11Sutton Trust and Social Mobility Commission, Elitist Britain 2019.
- 12Medical Schools Council, Fostering Potential: 10 years on from Selecting for Excellence.
- 13Sutton Trust, Unequal Treatment: access to medicine for disadvantaged students.
- 14NHS England Digital, NHS Vacancy Statistics.
- 15British Medical Association, Medical school expansion campaign.
- 16Social Mobility Commission, State of the Nation 2024: Local to National.
- 17Demos and Co-op, The Opportunity Effect: how social mobility can help drive business and the economy forward.
- 18Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, AI Skills Boost: free AI training for 10 million workers by 2030.
- 19Department for Education, 450,000 disadvantaged pupils could benefit from AI tutoring tools.
Answering the so what
Consultancy that ends in evidence, not a slide deck
Every engagement is scoped around the decisions you actually need to make: who to support, what to measure, how to win staff buy-in and when to scale.
Our model
Layers that add up to infrastructure
Product, platform, evidence and transformation come as one partnership, with one team accountable for the outcome.
Product
A specialist admissions support tool students actually use: subject discovery, university choice, entry exams, personal statements and interview practice across 20+ subjects.
Platform
A governable layer institutions can stand behind, with age-appropriate design, moderation and logging on every student input path, plus readiness dashboards for staff.
Evidence and evaluation
Baseline and follow-up measurement, comparator design and outcome linkage to interviews and offers wherever data sharing allows, built to be defended by an independent evaluator.
Transformation
A consultancy layer that scopes the pilot, trains staff, documents governance for risk assessment and reports honestly, so the programme survives scrutiny and scales.
Where a partnership goes
Pilot scoped and launched
Staff onboarded and active
Baseline and measurement set
Outcome linkage to offersEvidence review
Each layer is built into the partnership; outcome linkage to offers is reviewed against agreed comparator definitions.
AVA students are 4x more likely to get into medical school (92% versus 22%), and 2x more likely to get into Oxbridge across subjects.
How we work
From first conversation to embedded strategy
Every partnership follows the same disciplined path, so a pilot is set up to be evaluated honestly and a success can become permanent.
01
Scope the institutional problem
We map the target cohort, admissions route, current provision, staff workflow, data permissions and the outcomes that matter, before recommending anything.
02
Launch with adoption support
We configure the journeys, onboard staff, brief students and set a communications rhythm that drives activation, so the pilot actually gets used.
03
Measure what changes
We baseline up front and track activation, readiness, applications, interviews and offers, with outcome linkage wherever data sharing allows.
04
Scale to infrastructure
Evidence gates at pilot, renewal and expansion turn a successful pilot into an embedded, governable part of strategy, not another disconnected tool.
Service to problem
Each service answers a specific gap
The figures above describe an access and workforce problem with several distinct edges. Each of the three services is the response to one of them, not a general-purpose offer hoping to fit.
The student platform
The gap
Specialist admissions coaching has long been concentrated in independent and selective settings, so the students who could most benefit from preparation are the least likely to receive it.
Our response
A subject-specific preparation layer that any partner can put in front of a whole cohort at once, free for widening participation students, so quality support no longer depends on what a family can pay for privately.
Consulting and change management
The gap
Access teams are asked to widen who applies and who is offered a place, then asked to prove the result to a board or funder, often without the baseline data or evaluation design to do so credibly.
Our response
We scope the cohort, agree comparators and baselines up front, drive genuine adoption and report with engagement, observational findings and causal claims kept separate, so the work survives scrutiny.
Bespoke products and governance
The gap
When an institution needs something the platform does not offer, the safe option is usually a generic tool with safeguarding and data protection retrofitted, if they are considered at all.
Our response
A bespoke build held to the same bar as the core platform: triple-lock safeguarding, logging and age-appropriate design on every student input path, defensible in a data protection impact assessment from day one.
What is included
Four layers in every partnership
Whichever service you start with, the same four layers are available, built to work as one and included from the start.
The student platform
Subject-specific admissions preparation across more than twenty pipelines, with admissions-test practice, personal statement reflection and two-way interview simulation on one structure.
Implementation and change
Configuration, staff onboarding, student briefing and a communications rhythm that turns a licence into genuine adoption, so the platform is used rather than shelved.
Honest measurement
A baseline up front, follow-up afterwards, and reporting that keeps engagement, observational findings and causal claims clearly separate.
Safeguarding and governance
Triple-lock moderation, age-appropriate design and logging on every student input path, aligned with DfE Generative AI product safety standards and the ICO Children’s Code.
How a partner verifies it
Claims you can check, not take on trust
A service is only as good as a partner's ability to confirm it is working. These are the commitments that let a board, an evaluator or a quality team audit the work rather than accept a number on a slide.
Agreed baseline before launch
We record where the cohort starts before anything changes, so any later movement is measured against a real starting point rather than a hopeful estimate.
Activation you can see in the product
Adoption is read from what students actually do in the platform against an agreed communications rhythm, not inferred from a count of licences issued.
Methodology open to due diligence
The way we define cohorts, comparators and outcomes is documented and available for an evaluator or quality team to inspect before they rely on it.
Causal language held to evidence standards
An effect on offer rates is described with the comparator definition, the baseline and the documented limits alongside it, all agreed before a partner relies on the claim.
Implementation and onboarding
A managed path to go live
Each engagement runs a managed onboarding, so the platform is adopted, governed and measured from day one.
01
Scoping and access permissions
We agree the target cohort, the data we may and may not use, and the outcomes that matter to your board, before any configuration begins.
02
Configuration and staff training
We tailor the journeys to your programme, train the staff who will run it, and prepare the student-facing communications that drive activation.
03
Launch and activation
Students onboard through a short diagnostic, and we watch activation against an agreed communications rhythm rather than counting sign-ups alone.
04
Review and decide
At the first evidence gate we report honestly on what changed and what did not, then agree whether to continue, adjust or scale.
Safeguarding by design
Built safe for under-18s
Our users are 16 to 18 year-olds, so safeguarding is the foundation rather than a feature. Every service inherits the same protections on every student input path.
Every input path moderated
Triple-lock moderation screens student input before it reaches any model, so the platform stays safe for under-18s by design rather than by exception.
Logged and auditable
Inputs and responses are logged for review, so a safeguarding lead can see what happened and a quality process can stand behind it.
Age-appropriate by design
Content, tone and access controls are built for 16 to 18 year-olds, aligned with the ICO Children’s Code and DfE standards.
Evidence by default
Evidence leaders can put to work
Buyers have heard enough inflated impact claims. We are explicit about the line between product capability, observed cohort evidence and any causal claim a partner wants to rely on.
What partners can scrutinise
Engagement, readiness, cohort movement and outcome linkage are reported with definitions and context.
How each claim is backed
Engagement is reported as engagement. An offer-rate claim carries the agreed comparator, the baseline and the review standard that sit behind it.
AVA students are 4x more likely to get into medical school (92% versus 22%), and 2x more likely to get into Oxbridge across subjects.
Who it is for
Built for the people who run the programme
The services suit institutions that have to deliver access work, win staff and student adoption, and then prove the result to someone who will check.
Access and outreach leaders
Teams extending widening participation from aspiration through to application, interview and progression, who need the work to be measurable.
Admissions and recruitment
Universities and medical schools who want better-prepared, fairer applicant pipelines and outcome linkage wherever data sharing allows.
Funders and evaluators
Boards, foundations and evaluators who need a defined, evidence-led programme that survives scrutiny rather than a deck of vanity metrics.
Ways to partner
Start with a pilot, grow to infrastructure
Every partnership starts free for students and is scoped to what you need. Three shapes, by what they include. A short briefing call works out the detail.
Pilot
A focused first step: prove the value with one defined cohort, with the measurement in place from day one.
- A scoped cohort with full platform access
- Staff onboarding and adoption support
- Baseline and follow-up measurement
- A shared review at the end of the pilot
Programme partner
The platform running across your cohorts and subjects, with the dashboards and reporting to see what is changing.
- Access across cohorts and subject pipelines
- Readiness and engagement dashboards for staff
- Evaluation reporting you can take to funders
- Safeguarding and governance built in
Strategic partner
AVA as your standing access and evidence layer across programmes, with the consultancy and governance to scale it safely.
- Multi-programme or system-wide rollout
- Full evidence and outcome linkage
- Governance and assurance documentation
- Transformation support from pilot to scale
Students from widening participation backgrounds always use AVA free. Institutions partner at the level that fits their programme.
Explore more
Who we help
Universities, schools, the NHS, access organisations and funders, each with a tailored offer.
OpenExplore the subjects
Every competitive subject pipeline and its application timeline.
OpenEvidence and impact
How we measure outcomes, agree comparators and keep causal language precise.
OpenPolicy and standards
Safeguarding, AI governance and the standards our partnerships are built to.
OpenInstitutional partnership briefing
Bring AVA into your access, admissions or workforce strategy
We will map your cohort, current provision, delivery constraints and evidence goals, then recommend a pilot or partnership shape that can stand up to institutional scrutiny.
Book a 15-minute AI-readiness call
Tell us where your foundations stand and we will talk through whether the AI-readiness work is a fit. Pick a time below, or email us if you prefer.
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