The Sixth Form Schools in Britain: Their Advantages and Disadvantages

The Sixth Form schools in Britain: their advantages and disadvantages

In the education systems of England, Northern Ireland and Wales, sixth form represents the final two years of secondary education (high school), which is the last stage of secondary school for students typically between the ages of 16 and 18. A student in the sixth form, who is generally called a sixth-former, prepare for A-level examinations and study academic subjects. What’s more, sixth form is not compulsory in England and Wales. However, university entrance normally requires at least three A2-level qualifications and perhaps one AS-level. Students usually select three or four subjects from the GCSEs they have just taken, for one "AS" year, the AS exams being taken at the end of Lower Sixth. Three subjects are then carried into the A2 year (the dropped AS being "cashed in" as a qualification) and further exams are taken at the end of that year. The marks attained in both sets of exams are converted into UCAS points, which must meet the offer made by the student's chosen university.

During the 19th century, the sixth form has carried an almost mystical status in English education. An official committee on secondary education in 1938, chaired by Sir William Spens, argued that “much of what is most valuable in the grammar school tradition depends on the existence of a sixth form”. It trained character and developed a sense of responsibility, the committee reported, and it attracted “admiration and envy” overseas. Two decades later, the Crowther report on 15- to 18-year-olds claimed that, in the sixth form, boys and girls learned to work independently, acquired intellectual discipline and “intimate relations” with their teachers. It was taken for granted that sixth forms required much smaller classes than those for younger pupils. Nowadays, many parents, teachers and politicians feel a secondary school isn’t a proper school unless it has a sixth form. The feeling dates back to the time when grammar and fee-charging schools had sixth forms but secondary modern schools didn’t. Many of the pioneers insisted that sixth forms were essential to the new schools if they were to be taken seriously. Schools for 11- to 16-year-olds, they argued that the school would lack status and confidence, and furthermore, younger pupils would be deprived of role models and perhaps also of the best teachers. The same attitudes dictate that nearly all newly created academies must have sixth forms. Ministers do not want these to look like second-class schools, lacking prestige and pulling power. “A successful school almost always has a sixth form,” said Andrew Adonis, Labor’s godfather of academies.

Doubtlessly, the traditional school sixth form has become a tribal totem for Britain education. Some people believe that, Sixth Form is, in a way, all about preparing for going to university, and due to some big differences both in the academic difficulty and in the logistical arrangements of study, it is a considerable step from A-levels to undergraduate degree which helps students adjust to a somewhat different mode of academic life once they get to university. However, the opponent reckon that, sixth form is an expensive, outdated and counter-productive luxury in Britain education. It’s rarely big enough to sustain a wide range of subjects, for instance, it often disregards the creative arts, technical subjects and the less popular foreign languages, and concentrating on a narrow range of academic offerings that appeal to only a minority of young people. Same attitude from some education experts presents that, “it has prevented the emergence of a coherent vision for 14-19 education that could unify the vocational and academic strands of education and rid us of the pernicious belief that the academic strand is always superior.” Moreover, based on related data statistics, they believed that, by contrast, the sixth form colleges are an unqualified success. Their A-level results are on average 10% better than those of sixth form schools. In addition, colleges such as Portsmouth are starved of funds, having on average 18% less to spend on each pupil than a sixth form school. And accordingly, some people insisted that, it is time to bury school sixth forms and give the resources to sixth-form colleges, and particularly to those that unify academic and technical provision.