The English Sixth Form

A case study in curriculum research

Philip H. Taylor, W. A. Reid, B. J. Holley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000579949
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Curricula

First published in 1974, The English sixth form presents a comprehensive overview of the explicit characteristics and implications of sixth-form courses in an institutional context and in relationship to other organizations. The sixth form is an institution devoted mainly to providing an academic education for students who wish to remain in school beyond leaving age. Sixth forms are not self-contained institutions; they consist of the top class or classes in secondary schools receiving pupils from age of 11 or 12, or less frequently, 13 or 14. The book discusses crucial themes like the curriculum of the sixth form; the attitudes of sixth form teachers to the curriculum; the structure of the aims and objectives; influences and constraints; and the role of the universities. This book is an essential read for scholars and researchers of secondary education, school education, and education in general.

1 The idea of a sixth form

DOI: 10.4324/9781003282853-2

Every nation tends to regard its own educational arrangements as uniquely suited to human nature, and those of other nations as mild eccentricities to be tolerated but not imitated. However, the degree of idiosyncrasy exhibited by the English sixth form might be thought to be so extreme as to disqualify it as a subject for techniques of curriculum research with pretensions to general validity. In fact, its anomalies have a positive value to the researcher in that he is compelled to look carefully at the forces which have created and sustained the object of his research, and he must abandon the notion that a curriculum is a set of arrangements which rationality has called into being and which rationality can alter. The failure of recent attempts to introduce changes in the curriculum of the sixth form have shown the strength of the ideas and ideologies which underpin it, and it is to these that we must devote some attention in this chapter. But first of all a brief sketch is required of the sixth form and its place in the English educational system.

The sixth form is an institution devoted mainly to providing an academic education for students who wish to remain in school beyond the statutory leaving age (raised in 1973 from 15 to 16). Sixth forms are not self-contained institutions; they consist of the top class or classes in secondary schools receiving pupils from the age of 11 or 12, or, less frequently, 13 or 14. Other classes (first form, second form, etc.) consist of pupils in one year group, but the sixth form caters for students aged from 16 to 19, and is usually sub-divided into lower-sixth form and upper-sixth form. Occasionally, there is a third-year sixth form as well. Sixth-formers do not follow a fixed curriculum, but choose a small number of subjects, usually three, which they study in great detail, often with the intention of continuing their studies at the university. A recent survey showed that about two-thirds of boys and half the girls in sixth forms were intending to follow a university course when they left school.¹

However, instead of staying in school, a 16-year-old student may enrol for a full-time course in a college of further education.² Here he can follow an academic curriculum similar to the one he might have taken in a sixth form, or, more probably, he will follow one with a vocational bias. In a few areas he may have the choice of entering a sixth-form college, specifically designed for students in the 16-19 age range, and retaining some of the distinctive features of sixth forms, especially a bias towards academic courses. Sixth form colleges are of recent origin and, by January 1972, only fourteen had been opened, catering for about 9,000 students, but a further forty-three have been provided, or are being planned, and by 1976 they will serve about 27,000 students.³ Colleges of further education (and some sixth-form colleges) have important differences from sixth forms in that they admit part-time students, they cater for students of all ages over 16, including adults, and they provide almost any type of course for which there is a sufficient demand. However, most students of 16-19 are still to be found in the sixth forms of secondary schools. Table 1.1 shows how they are distributed among the various types of school.⁴

TABLE 1.1 Numbers of schools and sixth-form students, January 1971⁵

Type of secondary school	Total no. of schools	No. of schools providing A-level	Students on A-level courses^6	All students aged 16 and over
Modern	2,464	430	5,700	15,600
Grammar	970	964	114,800	119,800
Comprehensive	1,373	866	68,900	87,200
Other maintained	341	239	14,100	18,500
Direct grant	176	176	24,200	28,300
Independent	676	548	35,100	44,000
Total	6,000	3,223	262,800	313,400

The total number of students still in school after reaching the age of 16 represents about a quarter of those in the age range 16-18 (relatively few stay in school until they are 19), and those on A-level courses about a fifth of the same group. Some evidence about the numbers of full-time students enrolled not in schools but in colleges of further education is given in Table 1.2.

TABLE 1.2 Students aged 15-19 on full-time or sandwich courses⁷ in colleges of further education, November 1970⁸

	Full-time students	Students on sandwich courses
GCE O-level	29,800	—
GCE A-level	26,200	—
Other courses	69,100	4,100
Total (474 colleges)	125,100	4,100

When the figures for further education are taken into account, the proportion of the age group in full-time education rises to about a third, but only about a fifth of further-education students are following academic courses at A-level. About 60 per cent of sixth-form students are boys, while in further education they constitute only about 45 per cent of the total.

The development of the sixth form

In 1959 an official report appeared, entitled, 15 to 18, dealing with the education of students in that age range and paying special attention to the sixth form – which it saw as having five distinguishing ‘marks’:⁹

(A) close link with the university is, in our opinion, one of the essential marks of a Sixth Form. . . . The good and keen Sixth Former . . . has looked forward to being a science specialist, or a classic, or a historian: his mind has been set that way by inclination. . . . Whatever hinders specialization is to him, at first, a waste of time . . . specialization is a mark of the Sixth Form, and ‘subject-mindedness’ of the Sixth Former. The third mark ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Original Title
• Original Copyright
• Contents
• Tables
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: the scope of curriculum studies and research
• 1 The idea of a sixth form
• 2 The curriculum of the sixth form
• 3 The teacher and the curriculum
• 4 Aims and objectives
• 5 Influences and constraints
• 6 The role of the universities
• 7 Curriculum change and the organizational context
• 8 Research and policy: a concluding note
• Appendix A: Some recent proposals for changing the sixth-form curriculum
• Appendix B: Sampling procedures
• Glossary
• Notes
• Selected references
• Index