Hills Road Sixth Form College
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Hills Road Sixth Form College (HRSFC) is a state funded co-educational sixth form college in Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom. It provides full-time AS and A-level courses for approximately 1,800 students (mostly between the ages of 16 and 18) from the surrounding district. There are also around 4,000 part-time students in the adult education programme, mainly on evening classes. Its name comes from Hills Road, on which the college is situated.
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[edit] History
Hills Road Sixth Form College was established in 1974. From 1903 to 1973 it was previously the Cambridgeshire High School for Boys, and the buildings are still being used although they are much extended. The college has been greatly expanded in recent years, most noticeably by the Colin Greenhalgh building, which houses most arts subjects, followed by a new science building in 2004 and the Margaret Ingram Guidance Centre in 2005. The college site also contains the Hills Road Sports and Tennis Centre. Hills Road is one mile from Cambridge city centre and sits next to Homerton College and the Faculty of Education; it is opposite the Cambridge Leisure Park.
[edit] Collegiate board and admissions
Hills Road is one of five further education institutions in the Cambridge collegiate board. State secondary schools in the city and Village Colleges in the surrounding area form the rest of the collegiate board and most students will transfer to one of the five centres at age sixteen. Hills Road is over-subscribed and more selective than the alternatives in the board that offer A-Levels: Long Road Sixth Form College and the smaller sixth-form centres at the Netherhall School and Impington Village College. Hills Road will typically require candidates to achieve a B grade in a related GCSE to study an A-Level course, whereas Long Road require a C grade in most subjects. As a result, Hills Road tends to attract more able students and it is important to place its considerable success in this context.
The vast majority of students at Hills Road have attended a comprehensive feeder school in the local area. Due to its reputation, the college also attracts a minority of its students from out of area establishments and public schools, such as The Leys and the Perse schools.
[edit] Results, reputation and destinations
Hills Road is noted for its extremely high academic achievement in public examinations as well as all round success in many extra-curricular areas. The College has done very well in the league tables, finishing in the top three sixth form colleges, with an average of 404 A-level points per student (which is equivalent to four grade Bs) in 2005. In 2006, the college had an A-Level pass rate of 99.8%, 48% of A-Levels awarded were at grade A.
About 90% of Hills Road students go onto higher education following their time at the college, although for 40% this is after a gap year. About five percent of students enter full-time employment. Interestingly, over the last five years, half of students have gone onto attend one of just fifteen universities, namely: Birmingham, Bristol, Cambridge, Durham, East Anglia, Leeds, Loughborough, Manchester, Oxford, Nottingham, Sheffield, Sussex, Southampton, UCL and Warwick.[1] In 2006, fifty-two Hills Road students gained places at Oxbridge; this was a larger number than at any other state school and represents one in every sixteen students.[2]
Hills Road does not rank so highly on league tables when success is measured by 'value added'. Indeed, Long Road tends to have higher 'value added' scores. However, as with higher examination results at Hills Road this is consistent with more able students typically preferring to apply to Hills Road.
There is a further historical explanation for a preference towards Hills Road. In 1974 Cambridgeshire reformed its schools to a comprehensive system. The village colleges and their city equivalents, the community colleges, which had all been reduced to secondary modern schools were transformed into comprehensive schools. There were no sixth forms in secondary moderns, and the new comprehensive schools were similarly restricted to the 11-16 age range. There had previously been four states schools of grammar school status - the Girls Grammar, the Boys Grammar, and the High Schools for Boys and Girls. The first became Parkside Community College, the second merged with the Netherhall School to become an 11-19 school, and the third and fourth became Hills Road and Long Road sixth form colleges. As can be seen, the girls who had formerly been at the Girls Grammar needed to move to a new school for their sixth form studies - and it is not surprising that they generally preferred to join the boys at Hills Road rather than the girls at Long Road. That preference laid the foundations for Hills Road's academic success, and hence popularity, that has persisted ever since.
At its most recent OFSTED, teaching and learning was judged to be 'Outstanding' the top grade, in all eleven departments that were inspected. Leadership and management was also reported as 'Oustanding'.[3] Hills Road's retention rate is also well above the national average.
[edit] Notable Alumni
- The school was attended by Roger (Syd) Barrett and Roger Waters of the band Pink Floyd in the late 1950s.
- Hills Road was also attended by the famed thespian Tim Preece.
- Ben Thapa of the male singing quartet G4 attended Hills Road.
- Alison Balsom, a trumpeter, signed with EMI Classics, went to the college before going to music college.
[edit] Principals
- Colin Hill (1974 - 1984)
- Colin Greenhalgh (1984 - 2002)
- Dr Rob Wilkinson (2002 - present)
[edit] Student Council Chairpersons
- Jonathan Austin (2004-2005)
- Stephanie Kay (2005-2006)
- Nick Butterfield (2006 - 2007)
- Ovie Faruq (2007 - present)
[edit] References
- ^ Life after Hills Road Hills Road Website. Retrieved on 2006-12-30.
- ^ Hackett, G., State Schools & Oxbridge table, page 8 of The Sunday Times, 2006-12-17
- ^ 3 OFSTED. Retrieved on 2006-12-30.
