Text 4. It’s grown up, but is it clever?

Sixth-form colleges may seem less rigorous than schools but, says Paul Fisher, they do offer some advantages.

The traditional view of further education colleges is that they represent the last-chance saloon for those who can't hack school. Drop-outs must have somewhere to drop, and college, with its slack rules for slackers, is the place for a couple of years of hanging about. We thought exactly the same way when our daughter Kate mentioned sixth-form college after she had cleared the GCSE hurdle.

She eventually stayed put at school, and our parental prejudice that sixth-form colleges are simply academies where you have fun remained intact. But had we consulted a careers guru, we might have changed our minds.

“Different circumstances for different individuals”, says David Thomas, chief executive at the Careers Research Advisory Centre. “Where choices exist, you need to think about the individual child. If your child would benefit from a structured environment, then school is probably best; but if the child is not comfortable, they can make a fresh start at FE college, and nobody should underestimate the value of that”.

So those who have balked at school discipline, want to study less conventional subjects, have a lumpy academic history or value autonomy and don't see why they should call another adult “Mr” or “Miss” – all these and more might have the pedigree for college.

Tom Abbott, Matthew Fryett and Tom Moss all conform to parts of this non-conformist mould. These six-foot-something thoroughbreds turned up on time to tell me about quitting school for the City of Bath College. Tom A, 18, took a year off after his family returned from a US sojourn where he’d flunked his high-school grades.

“There’s no ritual, and that’s conducive to education”, he says. “It’s more mature. When I skipped a tutorial, my tutor phoned and asked to speak to me, not Mum or Dad.”

Tom Moss, 17, got disappointing GCSEs from a boarding school where he’d found life too tied to morning assemblies, obligations and timetables. “It’s your future,” he says. “You should have a choice, and I’m living by that choice.”

Meanwhile, Matthew, 17, left a local comprehensive in disgust. “Sixth formers are still called pupils, made to wear uniforms and told which side of the corridor to walk on,” he says. “I don’t react well to being led and now have more freedom to do what I want.”

And what’s that? “University.” Ditto for the other two who – though they were lazy boys – say they are now working hard. The talk oscillated between my agenda of discipline and their interests in what they are doing now (an AS exam that morning) and what they’ll do next. I pop the drug question and get straight answers. “People get up to the same things at school. Schools are just uptight. They have to be”.

Fair to say, they appreciate adult treatment and, in return, assess their lecturers in adult ways. Matthew’s school had told him that college lecturers don’t care about their charges.

“Untrue,” he says. “It’s just that they don’t have the same pastoral duties or run themselves ragged chasing lazy students. The framework is different and if you do show interest, they are more ready to talk you through a subject”.

College grades are lower, I say, but Matthew knows the reasons. “That’s because colleges take on all-comers. Schools are a better success engine but – provided you’re committed – colleges give you greater freedom to decide for yourself.”

In these enlightened days, three out of five 17-year-olds decide to stay on in education. England has 1,829 state and 700 private schools with sixth forms, plus 308 FE colleges and 105 sixth-form colleges.

According to the Department for Education: “Some 72 per cent (126,480) of A-level candidates aged 17 are in schools and 28 per cent (49,240) in further education-sector colleges”. In other words, the normal thing is to choose school, and for sound elitist reasons: schools do best. Last year, 23 per cent of their A-level candidates got an A/AS-level point score of 25 or over, compared with 18 per cent at sixth-form colleges and 11 per cent from the other FE colleges.

The national A-level points average is 18.5, the equivalent of three grade Cs. But the canny punter knows that averages are bucked by particulars, and the first rule for those who feel they may not be the right horse for a school course is to study institutional form. Many will want vocational training, in which case FE college is probably best.

Gather the bumf, look at the courses, talk to the teachers and students, visit the colleges. They’ll respond with strong sales pitches because, with each A-level candidate attracting fees of between £2,000 and £3,000, the stakes are high. No wonder they all shout the odds like racetrack bookies.

Liz Rodger, the City of Bath College principal, points out that unlike schools, the FE sector gets funding for successful finishers rather than those who merely start A-levels. “We’re conscious that moving to our sixth-form centre is a big decision for 16-year-olds and it's important, for them and for us, that the right subjects are selected. We provide choice and a focused alternative without the distractions of 11-16-year-olds. The choice is not one of good and bad, but of different approaches”. Her college teaches 41 A-level subjects and she reports a points average of 13.3.

It's competitive out there and Roy Ludlow, the head of nearby Beechen Cliff boys’ school, maintains that Bath College’s score is actually 8.1. “Not that it’s the only factor, of course, and you should check that figure”.

Ludlow’s school offers 24 A-level courses and has a 17.6 point A-level average. “What I say to parents is that I don’t believe that, on the whole, 16-year-olds are mature enough for an uncontrolled environment,” he says. “It’s preferable for them to stay with what they know and not waste time settling into new surroundings.”

Another local competitor is Peter Bradshaw, the principal at St Brendan’s Sixth Form College. “We’re 16-19 specialists,” he says, “and the ideal halfway house between school and the wider world. We have a college culture and are big enough to offer a wider range of courses than most schools. If I look into my crystal ball, I’d say that larger sixth-form centres will continue growing, and that the days of the small school sixth form are numbered". For the record, St Brendan's offers 40 A levels and its points average is 17.2.

And what does my daughter Kate think about all this? “There is far more freedom in the sixth form anyway,” she says, “so I don’t feel repressed at school.” In other words, everyone is happy, though we hope Kate’s brother and sister also play it safe and keep life simple for us. But if they don’t, we won’t be quite as prejudiced as the first time around.

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Text 3. Education and Training After 16	\|	The post-GCSE choice

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