An introduction to Sixth Form Colleges
BackThis briefing note is designed to help new governors understand the sixth form college sector. It introduces the distinctive role of sixth form colleges within post-16 education, their strengths and purpose, and outlines the key strategic challenges they face.
Every summer, around half a million 16-year-olds face life-shaping choices:
• Which qualifications to take: A levels, applied qualifications, a mix of both, an apprenticeship, or a technical qualification for a trade.
• Where to study: staying in a school sixth form, moving to a sixth form college, enrolling in a general FE college, or entering the workplace.
Around 75% of 16-year-olds study at Level 3, and among them, 79% choose a sixth form education – pursuing A levels or applied qualifications that pave the way to university and professional careers. Overall, 13% of all 16-18-year-olds attend a sixth form college or 16-19 academy – but not every area has one. In communities without a sixth form college, sixth formers have little choice but to remain in school – missing out on the breadth, independence, and specialist opportunities that these colleges provide.
Distinctive role, distinctive strengths
Sixth form colleges are part of a wider sixth form ecosystem, but with a unique mission: to lead and innovate in high-quality sixth form education. They specialise in A levels and applied qualifications, and they deliver these at scale. While the average school sixth form has 220 students, the average sixth form college has 2,200, with some educating 5,000 16 to 19 year olds. This scale brings efficiencies and the flexibility to offer an exceptionally broad curriculum, giving students access to a diverse range of subjects and pathways that prepare them for success in higher education, apprenticeships, and skilled employment.
The environment also feels different. Sixth form colleges typically adopt a more university-like atmosphere: no uniforms, staff addressed by first names, and an expectation of independent learning and self-regulation – the very skills valued in higher education.
Specialist expertise and impact
Focused solely on 16-19-year-olds, sixth form colleges build deep expertise. Teachers often work in large subject teams, sharing best practice and driving up quality. The enrichment offer is vast, with wide-ranging student-led activities alongside academic study. At the time of writing almost every sixth form college has been highly rated by Ofsted.
Leading in metacognition
Metacognition is “the process of thinking about your own thinking.” Metacognitive approaches teach students to self-assess, adapt strategies, and take responsibility for progress – this is especially valuable in A-level settings where time is short and expectations are high, (research from the Education Endowment Foundation shows metacognition and self-regulation strategies can add the equivalent of +8 months of progress in a year), but it is also crucial for preparation for life beyond sixth form. Universities and employers value independent problem-solvers!
Sixth form colleges are leaders in teaching metacognitive skills for students, including designing subject specific strategies and running action research to trial metacognitive strategies. Some colleges have introduced micro-workshops combining metacognition with exam skills, well-being and goal setting.
For sixth form specialist staff it is an embedded and powerful teaching and learning tool because it helps students become self-regulating, independent learners. This is essential not only in their sixth form studies, but also at a stage where they are preparing for university or employment.
Leadership beyond their walls
With decades of autonomy behind them, sixth form colleges have developed strong governance and robust financial management. Student governors remain a distinct feature of sixth form governing boards. In recent years, many colleges have taken on system leadership roles – partnering with local schools, sharing expertise and resources, and sometimes forming multi-academy trusts.
Sixth form colleges don’t just educate – they shape futures, strengthen communities, and set the standard for what post-16 education can be.
The purpose of Sixth Form Colleges
Sixth form colleges exist to:
1. Provide high-quality academic education
Specialising in A-levels and applied qualifications to prepare students for:
- University (often high progression rates)
- Higher apprenticeships
- Employment
2. Serve a broad, inclusive student base
- Open access model: students come from multiple feeder schools
- Often located in urban or suburban centres, increasing access for varied communities
3. Bridge the gap between school and adulthood
- Offer a more adult learning environment than school sixth forms, but with more structure than FE colleges
- Encourage independence, self-directed study, and a pre-university ethos
4. Deliver value and efficiency
Sixth form colleges are generally:
- More cost-efficient than school sixth form
- Able to pool resources for subject breadth
5. Offer a broad and flexible curriculum
-
More subjects with more permutations giving greater choice and combinations of choices to learners
-
Specialist teachers with dedicated focus on 16-19
6. Offer a rich extra-curricular experience
- Engaging and developing student skills and aptitudes alongside and beyond academic study
7. Expert pastoral care and extensive careers support
- Full-time tutors experienced in 16-19 issues
- Individual and group support in pastoral matters and study programme performance
8. Act as community anchors
- Some run adult education or enrichment activities
- Engage with local employers and universities.
Distinctive features compared to other providers
| Feature | Sixth Form College | School Sixth Form | General FE College |
| Focus | Academic and applied qualifications | Academic, plus pastoral links | Academic + technical/vocational |
| Age Range | 16-19 mainly | 16-19 mainly | 16-adult |
| Environment | Semi-adult, campus-style | School-based, structured | Adult-style, often larger |
| Governance | College corporation or academy trust, including student governors | Academy trust or school governing body | FE college corporation, student governors |
16-19 Performance
Sixth form colleges and 16-19 academies are responsible for educating over a fifth (22%) of A Level students in the mainstream state sector in England each year and help their students to achieve better exam results than the rest of the state sector.
Average A level value-added for all students
- Sixth form colleges and 16-19 academies: 0.01
- Rest of the mainstream state sector: -0.04
A level delivery in England4
- Sixth form colleges and 16-19 academies 22%
- School and academy sixth forms 64%
- Free school sixth forms 4%
- Further education Colleges 10%
Progression to Higher Education
| Progression rate of students1 | Overall education or employment/training destination | UK higher education institution |
| Sixth form colleges and 16-19 academies – all students | 85% | 51% |
| Sixth form colleges and 16-19 academies – disadvantaged students | 79% | 46% |
| All schools and colleges – all students | 80% | 39% |
| All schools and colleges – disadvantaged students | 67% | 22% |
% of students who are disadvantaged2,3
- All school/academy sixth forms: 16%
- Sixth form colleges and 16-19 academies: 19%
1. Analysis of latest (2021/22) cohort destinations from DfE performance tables
2. SFCA analysis of DfE performance tables, 2023 to 2024
3. This measure looks at students’ status in their final year of 16-18 study. Disadvantaged pupils are defined as those who were eligible for free school meals at any point in the previous six years or have been looked after by their local authority. These are students who would have attracted the Pupil Premium in their last year of KS4.
4. Numbers of A-level students found in the mainstream state sector at the end of 16-18 study found in DfE performance tables, 2023 to 2024.
Sixth Form Colleges and their wider context
Over the past decade, government policy for post-16 education has, almost exclusively, focused on technical education rather than a sixth form curriculum. It has an employer focussed mission which continues to diverge from the student focussed mission it envisages for schools and academies. What does this mean for sixth form colleges, which tend toward a space between school and FE? And what context do current board members need to understand?
Sixth Form Colleges and skills
Government policy for the 16-19 age group is directed primarily toward technical education, pursued by only about 8% of the age group, rather than the sixth form route chosen by the majority of 16-18-year-olds.
While there is an undeniable need for a workforce equipped with technical skills and professional licences, we also need to develop the next generation of highly qualified professionals: doctors, lawyers, engineers, web designers, marketers, publishers, and journalists. If the UK is to remain globally competitive, we require future professionals with advanced knowledge, alongside strengths in problem-solving, creativity, and communication. Sixth form education, delivered by sixth form colleges, is central to this goal.
Yet successive governments’ proposals for post-16 education – and the language used to explain them – often feel alien to many sixth form colleges. Skills policies typically start from the premise of “putting employers at the heart of post-16 skills, driving technical and higher technical skills provision in their areas.” This approach tends to treat all colleges, including sixth form colleges, as a single, employer-focused group. By contrast, most sixth form colleges begin with a different principle: putting students at the heart of a broad sixth form education that opens a wide range of national and local opportunities.
This employer-focused model places particular demands on sixth form college corporations that often feel out of
step with their core mission. Ofsted’s enhanced skills inspections, accountability agreements, and a range of FE initiatives – many tied to a “duty to meet local needs” – are frequently misaligned with the distinctive ethos of sixth form colleges. The inconsistency is further compounded by the fact that sixth form colleges with 16-19 academy status are not subject to the same duties. This, combined with an increasingly inhospitable further education policy environment is one reason why there has been a sharp increase in the number of sixth form colleges considering converting their status to academy.
The Sixth Form Colleges Association continues to make the case that all sixth form colleges, with their distinctive mission and ethos, should be extended the same exemptions.
Protecting student choice in Sixth Form Colleges
For many years young people in England have been able to choose from three main types of Level 3 qualification at age 16:
- Academic qualifications such as A levels
- Technical qualifications such as T levels
- Applied General Qualifications (AGQs) such as BTECs, which combine practical skills with academic learning
AGQs come in different sizes, and many can be studied alongside other qualifications – for example, combining a BTEC with A levels in a sixth form college. The vast majority of sixth form students follow either an academic or AGQ pathway rather than a technical one.
Since 2016, successive governments have proposed removing AGQs, leaving only A levels and T levels as options. The SFCA has consistently opposed this policy, believing that for many young people, AGQs offer a more effective route to higher education or skilled employment than either A levels or T levels.
Currently, 277,380 students are studying an AGQ, but these qualifications are now being phased out.
Because AGQs are disproportionately chosen by disadvantaged students, removing them risks undoing recent gains in widening access to higher education. It could also increase the number of young people not in education, employment, or training (NEET).
SFCA co-ordinates the Protect Student Choice campaign that is calling on the government to retain applied qualifications alongside A levels and T levels. Further details can be found in our recent report Creating gaps, causing uncertainty. At the time of writing we are urging the government to ensure that AGQ diplomas and extended diplomas in T level subjects continue to be available in 2026 and 2027.
Sixth Form Colleges as 16-19 Academies
Since 2017, 34 sixth form colleges – representing approximately one third of the original group – have converted to 16-19 academy status, and more are expected to follow in the coming months.
The option to academise was introduced in response to SFCA’s 2015 Drop the Learning Tax campaign, which sought to remove the VAT burden on colleges. In practice, however, VAT recovery has rarely been the main driver of conversion.
Why academise?
Key motivations include the desire to work more closely with local schools or other sixth form colleges to raise standards, strengthen partnerships, improve efficiency, deliver better value for money, and expand development opportunities. Conversion can also help secure student progression by building stronger links with feeder secondary schools, as well as protecting market share by establishing the college as the leading sixth form provider in its area.
In recent years, another factor has emerged: the appeal of operating within a more relevant and supportive policy framework. For many leaders, remaining in a further education sector increasingly defined by narrow, utilitarian government priorities has become less attractive. The reclassification of sixth form colleges as public sector bodies in November 2022 has added further bureaucracy – including compliance with the Managing Public Money framework – without extending the financial benefits enjoyed by 16-19 academies.
Understanding these motivations and policy pressures is key to shaping future decisions about academisation – both for individual colleges and for the sector as a whole.
How is pay set in Sixth Form Colleges?
The SFCA acts on behalf of its members as employers, working closely with the national teacher and support staff unions to negotiate a national pay and conditions of service framework and to agree pay levels of all teaching and non-teaching employees in institutions covered by the National Joint Council (NJC).
The NJC is the negotiating machinery between the SFCA and the teacher and support staff unions. Both employer side (drawn from principals and governors on the SFCA Council) and staff side on the NJC have repeatedly expressed a deep commitment to the NJC and every year to date a national collective agreement has been reached.
Importantly, the NJC enables SFCA member colleges to determine the pay and conditions of their colleges while providing consistency, transparency and fairness across the sector.
Recent NJC pay agreements, which have kept pace with pay in the school sector and the wider public sector, help the sector to recruit and retain high-quality teaching and support staff. In addition to pay, NJC also support college members on wider staff matters including, for example, job evaluation and approaches to prevent sexual harassment and bullying in the college workplace.
What does the future hold for sixth form education?
There is much well-rehearsed debate about the funding constraints that shape what can be delivered in sixth form colleges, often forcing leaders into difficult curriculum and staffing decisions. Beyond funding, the sector faces a host of challenges and developing opportunities: the future of assessment and the role of online, adaptive testing; the integration of Artificial Intelligence into teaching; the mismatch of modular university-style curricula versus the linear model adopted in the sixth form a decade ago; demographic shifts that will see today’s growth in the 16-19 population give way to a sharp decline by the end of the decade – hitting smaller institutions hardest.
The workforce must also become more diverse while grappling with the ongoing struggle to recruit and retain high-quality teachers and support staff. Meanwhile, the Multi Academy Trust model appears here to stay.
Applied General Qualifications such as BTECs provide many of the so-called “soft skills” – problem-solving, creativity, communication – that employers urgently need. It remains to be seen how V levels will fill this gap once AGQs will be defunded. The proposal that V levels will be available in one size (equivalent to one A level) is a particular concern. Sixth form colleges face a confusing and disruptive transition to the new qualification system.
Technical education and skills are important – but so too is the broad, ambitious education that sixth form colleges deliver. They are not simply part of the system; they are a cornerstone of it. Sixth Form matters – for students, for communities, and for the country’s future prosperity.
Further reading from SFCA
- Sixth Form Matters – a collection of case studies and thought leadership pieces
- The role of student board members and how to support them
- Selecting and using a Code of Governance to strengthen governing a sixth form college
- Developments in AI - an introductory overview of AI in the sector
- Academisation for Sixth Form Colleges, SFCA Guidance
- Sixth Form Colleges: 2025 key facts and figures
- X @SFCA_info
- E: info@sixthformcolleges.org