If I were in the Department of Education or BIS I would be fairly keen on high achieving sixth form colleges. OK, they’re not perfect, and like any places of learning they always need to improve, but if you were trying to design a good system for post-16 education this would pretty much be it. High achievement, very good value added, lots of students from deprived backgrounds getting into the best universities, great contribution to the country’s need for STEM students, wonderful enrichment in terms of music, drama and sport: a half-way house to university, promoting independent learning and leadership. And all for such a fantastic price! Sixth form college places cost the government much less than any other part of the education sector. They’re really efficient: the top 15 or so sixth form colleges send out into the world students of real flair and ability, but they are not subsidised from the 11-16 budget or paid for by exorbitant private fees. They foster the success, personal development and creativity that usually come with small class sizes, without…. small class sizes. 

So I was really rather bemused when the Area Based Review bandwagon rolled up last summer, and started as a one-size-fits-all process. I would have quite understood if a system had been set up to look at underachieving colleges, or those struggling financially, or even specific areas where a wider geographical solution was desperately necessary. What surprised me, though, as a principal in the first wave, was how much the whole thing was being cooked up as we went along. What looked like a process designed for and focussed on General FE colleges, seemed to an outsider to have swept sixth form colleges into its brief at the last minute – perhaps because of the circumstances of just a few. So many of the questions asked, methodologies used and solutions proposed seemed to be out to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.

The team rode into town, gun-toting and trigger-happy, telling principals of brilliant sixth form colleges that they faced cuts of 20% to 40%, and they would have to merge with local General FE colleges (sometimes with much bigger debts and much lower success rates) to ‘improve outcomes and efficiency’, and at the same time letting schools completely off the hook. It was a scenario worthy of a battle royal, for the sake of sixth form students.

But what followed was something rather different, and something of a tribute to these exceptional sixth form colleges, which do such a good job of realising the aspirations of several recent governments to help those in most need to achieve the highest goals. They knuckled down, answered all the questionnaires, helped the team re-write the inept ones, hosted all the visits, listened to all the arguments, and engaged in a genuine and open way.

The Treasury, to its credit, then took away some of the scare-mongering by guaranteeing the post-16 funding rate for four years, further phasing the impact of some of the previous cuts, and announcing the possibility of academisation for some colleges that had been seeking it (well before the Area Based Review process began).

At last it began to be recognised that these high performing sixth form colleges were part of the solution – not part of some problem, to be further compounded in faceless mega institutions. At last the Department for Education began to wake up to its brilliant sixth form colleges, realizing that they are quite like their precious academies – only bigger, higher achieving, more successful in widening participation, and much more efficient. Principals who had had to devote 10% or 20% of their time in some weeks to the Area Based Review process, at last began to feel that the team were ‘getting’ the point. It was a case not of ‘what can the Area Review do to you?’ but rather of ‘what can you do for the Area Review?’

And that’s while they’re just getting the point of excellent achievement coupled with a very comprehensive approach to admissions and a powerful ethos of enrichment and aiming high. What will happen when they realise some of the other things we do well, such as HE in the community, excellent programmes for genuine foreign students, and other entrepreneurial activity that reduces the burden on the taxpayer?

This may all sound like sour grapes. It’s not. There were some good people on the team, some excellent people from the local community in leading roles. They couldn’t help the fact that sixth form colleges had been included in a blanket way, and schools had been completely let off the hook. Some of them didn’t even know much about sixth form colleges, or their engagement with the community, or their wonderful enrichment opportunities, or the sheer volume of their contribution to our best universities’ recruitment. Nor did they realise how ‘schools-facing’ they are, or the work many of them do to help raise standards locally and nationally. They do now. And here’s hoping the people back in the government ministries who started all these horses running know a bit more too. Because if we are to take on the world, this country needs more outstanding sixth form colleges, not fewer.