The evolution of Applicaa

Applicaa was first founded as ULAS in 2014 when Guthrie Denniston and Tim Dixon, Geography teachers at Greenford High School, London, recognised the challenges in student admissions and engagement.

Initially, the system was set up as an online platform to help connect young people to apprenticeship opportunties but Greenford High School was also facing a 20–30% decline in Sixth Form enrolments. This was impacting funding and increasing pressure on leadership, so Guthrie and Tim began to research a more effective admissions solution. Tim began developing an in-house online admissions system to replace their cumbersome paper-based process, however, the manual data entry into the school's main Management Information System (MIS) remained a significant obstacle.

In 2016, the development of the very first version of Admissions+ began. It had revolutionary features such as reference collection and course availability trigged by results, and it's first trial on enrolment day 2017 proved to be successful for Greenford High School. Over the course of the following year, thirty ULAS schools adopted Admissions+ and by summer 2018 a handful of those schools had not only used the successfully used the system to manage their enrolment day - but had even managed to transfer data to their MIS, saving them huge amounts of time.

Between 2018 and 2019, 100 new schools signed up to Admissions+, the Year 7 data collection form was launched, Applicaa developed strong partnerships with SIMS, Progresso, Bromcom and Arbor and the team doubled from eight to over 20 staff. This proved to be a crucial year and was the start of exponential growth for the company.
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Today, with Guthrie still leading as CEO alongside Antony Wambua as COO, Applicaa continues to scale by supporting over 2,500 schools, MATS and colleges with a wide portfolio online solutions for admissions, enrolment and marketing. Applicaa continuously refines its technology to meet the evolving needs of education institutions, students and parents, and takes immense pride in its strong relationships with customers.  The company now employs over 60 staff, with expert teams based in the UK, Philippines and Vietnam.

Find out more about the team

Our values


Growth Mindset - learning new things, listening to feedback, and growing in knowledge
Grit - remaining resilient and always look for solutions to problems
Kindness - showing compassion to others and offering support where needed
Openness - everyone has a voice and everyone's input is equally valuable
Teamwork - Applicaa is proud to have people that value true teamwork
Bias to Action - we embody urgency and agility, adapting to change, seizing opportunity and pioneering innovation



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