A Level Design | Online Art & Design Course

This Online A Level Art and Design course will give you the opportunity to gain enough credits (up to 56) to be able to pursue art and design at university. The course has been designed to give you a sound understanding of the theory and practice of art and design, and also give you a good idea of what to expect at degree level.

Please note, top universities require 112 UCAS points. In order to attain this, our students can enrol on one of our Foundation Diplomas, which offer up to 112 UCAS points.

Entry requirements

Candidates must be 16 years or over
Have a GCSE / IGCSE Art or photography, or evidence of a good portfolio.
Mature students do not require exam qualifications but some ability to draw and paint and a desire to succeed are required. If you are unsure what level your work is at, you can send examples for preliminary assessment.

Please note: students must secure an examination centre before applying for the A-Level Design course. Our Design Foundation Diploma, requires no examination centre.

Study Options

Study AS/A Level Art online in a way that suits you. We offer both full and part time courses to meet the needs of our students:

Part-time programmes (2 years): available all year around – enrolling now
Full-time programmes (1 year): start December to January and September to October. Exceptions may apply.

Accreditations and UCAS Points

Our online A Level art course is fully accredited and will see graduates leaving with a full A Level in Art.

Accreditation: AQA, Edexcel, OCR, WJEC, CIE
UCAS Tariff: up to 56 points - at A* grade – university entry requires around 100 UCAS points. For more UCAS points study Foundation Diploma instead or consider another A Level alongside your Art course.
UCAS application supported: Yes

Additional Course Information

Portfolio support: Yes
Progression: to any University / BA Honours Degree (you will need 1 or 2 other A-Levels to enter University. If you don’t have these then see our range of Foundation Diploma courses).

The course comprises 4 units (2x AS and 2x A2):

AS Unit 1. Portfolio

The portfolio section of this course helps students get a grasp of a range of materials, processes, and techniques. Students should be able to display a broad range of skills through their work. .

Each student must include in their portfolio:

a selection of thoughtfully presented work that demonstrates the breadth and depth of the course of study
at least one extended collection of work or project, based on an idea, concept, theme or issue. This should demonstrate the student’s ability to sustain work from an initial starting point to a realisation. It should include evidence of their ability to research and develop ideas and link their work in a meaningful way to relevant critical/contextual materials.

AS Unit 2

The A Level Design course is assessed by examination. Separate question papers will be provided for each title. These will consist of a choice of five questions to be used as starting points. Students are required to select one. Students will be provided with examination papers on 1 February, or as soon as possible after that date.

Preparatory period – from 1 February

Following receipt of the paper, students should consider the starting points and select one.
Preparatory work should be presented in any suitable format, such as mounted sheets, design sheets, sketchbooks, workbooks, journals, models and maquettes.
Supervised time – 10 hours
Following the preparatory period, students must complete 10 hours of unaided, supervised time.
The first 3 hours of the supervised time must be consecutive.
In the 10 hours, students must produce a finished outcome or a series of related finished outcomes, informed by their preparatory work.
These units are effectively repeated in year 2 but work is expected to be at a higher level. This is reflected in a 15-hour exam (supervised time) in year 2

DON”T LIKE EXAMS OR WRITING ESSAYS AND WANT TWICE THE UCAS POINTS FOR THE SAME AMOUNT OF WORK – see our range of specialist Foundation Diplomas! You can start these at any time and complete them in a year! A-Levels have to be started in September and will take 2 years to complete. An A-Level art on its own won’t get you into a top University but a Foundation Diploma will!