Is it true that clever people go to 6th form and people who aren't go to college

Many here are confusing sixth form college with FE college. FE is more vocational and sixth form college, generally speaking, more academic. Clever people found in each.

It tended to be the other way around here. Sixth form was just an extension of secondary. Same old teachers, same old resources. You didn’t have to apply to attend.

Colleges round me had generic subjects but also specialised in different areas. More resources, new teachers. You not only had to apply to the college, but you had to apply to each individual subject and get accepted.

So the clever ones went to the colleges which were good in their subjects of choice. The not so clever or more practically oriented went to vocational colleges. The mediocre all rounders went to 6th form.

Round here there is a 'prestige' 6th form college, an FE college which offers A levels plus several vocational courses / BTECs plus the majority of secondary schools have their own 6th forms . Many students choose to go to the FE college rather than remaining in their school 6th form as it is a lot more relaxed, not so 'school-like'.

I made the same choice myself nearly 40 years ago .

NONE of the Catholic schools around here have sixth form. Not just in my (large) town but in the nearest city- which is also the capital city. There is an RC sixth form college. If you go to an RC school and want to do A Levels, you go to the 6th form college. Many students who want to do A Levels but don't want to stay in their own (non RC) school 6th form also choose to go there.

I left a grammar school to go to a sixth form college as I felt it would better prepare me for life/Uni. Sixth form college was the best choice I could have made. I have a postgraduate degree from a top UK university. However I think it depends on the student, I was very organised and proactive with my education, friends of mine would possibly have achieved better results if they had stayed at school

Depends on the school and college surely.

The sixth form at my DD's school has far lower entry requirements than the sixth form college.

Was true in St Albans during the 90’s, schools would offload the very poorly behaved to the College or not allow kids to come back ( some of the middle class drug dealers were ‘non returners’ and had been ‘ persuaded to go to college’….) The school didn’t have to take them. They also segregated us between GNVQ/ Herts Achievement project and those of us who qualified to do A Levels ( I had A level classes of 5, the teaching was amazing, not even a private school could rival that kind of input - not sure how my school did it but bloody glad it did).

I worked in an area where we and other schools didn’t offer 6th Form and kids went to College … some moaned to me that while they got to wear what they liked, the chasing for work, support etc wasn’t there am guessing things have changed from the mid 00s though, with the raising of the leaving age/ education requirement for youngsters.

Depends on the area. Where I grew up only the private schools had sixth forms, so everyone went to one of the three big colleges in the nearest cities. My college did everything, A levels, Btecs, Functional Skills for people leaving special education. The A levels were slightly selective (two Bs and three Cs I think) so if you didn't get the grades you were guided towards Btec options, but lots of people did Btecs anyway for art etc. It was a much better system than staying at school with only A level students I think, I had a much broader view of what made someone "clever" and why people might choose different qualifications than most of my peers at uni.

No. Academic abilities isn't the only form of clever so even in areas where sixth forms are more academic compared to more vocational colleges, that wouldn't make sense.

In my area, about half the secondaries don't have sixth forms and the rest do not have space to take those in. In fact, one of the inadequate secondaries that used to have a sixth form was academised, and the sixth form was dropped. Much of that space became their new SEND block., and we've more students in the area going to colleges. I've heard that's not uncommon - that academisation may have schools dropping sixth forms if it's weakly performing - but I've no stats on that.

Also, some colleges run small KS4 programmes now. My DS1 'stayed on' at the same college he went to for Y10 & 11. There is a lot of variation in options depending on where someone is, so there is a wide range of where the 'clever' kids go.

Eerrrr no. Some of the top 6th forms in the country are colleges. Take Hills Rd in Cambridge as an example. Or Cardiff 6th form college. Lots of oxbridge candidates.

My school and most of the others in my city didn't have 6th forms apart frim the private ones and the grammar.
Any friends i had in those seemed much younger/immmature by the time we all left. It was like they never left secondary school. They seemed a bit less prepared for the world and definitely less streetwise but that might be to do with private schools/upbringing rather than their 6th form

We did have colleges that were better for a-levels and some that were more for vocational courses so there was sort of a split there with the people who were aiming for uni and people who weren't. But that was more practical then anything else.

It used to be that sixth form was more academic subjects and college more vocational building, hairdressing and that is where the resources for these courses were, while schools did the more classroom based stuff like sciences, humanities and languages.

It is much less clear cut these days.
University degrees are also the full spectrum of academic to vocational no more Polytechnics.

A lot has changed since the 1980s 😂

Yup. Repeat thread. Identical post.

I live in an area where secondary schools have Sixth Forms. People who go to college didn't get the grades for Sixth Form or want to do a course that Sixth Form doesn't offer eg T-levels.

Same. Plus my school sixth form was tiny - I’d basically have had one to one tuition for at least one of my subjects. So claustrophobic.

I went to a very academic sixth form college. Very sought after. Probably did better there than I would have if I’d stayed at school, plus I made loads of new friends and had some independence. They aren’t all viewed as “less”.

I preferred college, no uniforms, teachers called by first names, no chasing and spoon feeding, if you didn't have in your work out was your responsibility, if you didn't revise that was on you. I was much better prepared than some of my uni peers who'd come from school sixth forms

Few schools where I grew up had such friends and those that did were very narrow and the entrance requirements lower than the academic sixth form college. We did have a two tier college system one that focused on academic subjects and one known as 'the tech' that did apprenticeships and more practical subjects like health and social care, travel and tourism , hairdressing, mechanics etc. It was much harder to get into the former.

There is an element of this in our area. Or at least those who get better GCSE results tend to go to the school 6th forms as they have higher entry requirements- or at least the higher performing schools do. But whether good GCSE results are synonymous with "clever" is of course debatable.

My daughter is very clever but planning to go to tech college as they have a wider range of the arts subjects that she's interested in.

Fwiw where I live are only colleges, no school 6th forms so there's only colleges but some are technical colleges and some are 6th form colleges. People tend to go to the 6th form to do a levels and the tech to do more specific or vocational courses.

This is such a weird concept, I don't think it is true.

I went to 6th form college, I didn't want to stay at school.
I got 3 A levels, an AS level, 2 BSc and a MSc so I wouldn't describe myself as "not good enough" exactly!

More academic children tend to do A-levels
Less academic children tend to do BTECs and alternative qualifications.

Some more academic children choose BTECs or alternative qualifications if they know what they want to do as a career and the BTECs/Alts are a better fit.

School 6th forms tend to only offer A levels. 6th Form colleges tend to offer A levels, plus some BTECs. Technical colleges tend to offer BTECS and other alternative qualifications.

On average the grades needed to go on to A levels at school 6th form > the grades needed to do A levels/BTECs at 6th form college > the grades needed to do BTEC or alternative qualifications at technical colleges. But each child needs to choose the course that suits them best.

Are you having a bad day or is there a back story to the post you’re replying to?

I can never understand why anyone would want to stay on at school.
God I hate this MN bullshit faux naivety. You do understand, you just can’t come up with a better way to be sneakily judgemental and patronising.

In areas where schools have 6th Forms, often schools offer only some or no vocational courses, so schools have a large proportion of 6th formers doing A Levels. There is a bigger choice of vocational courses at college these understandably attract more who want to do them and typically they have less stellar GCSE grades. Of course there are exceptions.

This is further skewed by the fact that areas with state Grammar schools and large numbers of private schools, offer A Levels only in their 6th Forms and often have higher entry requirements. Therefore these places gain higher grades at A Level as they are naturally more selective. Therefore such places have higher properties of higher ability kids. In some of these areas, it’s only the selective schools or those that were previously Grammars that have sixth forms and othe schools don’t have 6th forms. Given more high achieving kids (and it is linked to socio-Economics….which isn’t the same at all as saying those from less well-off backgrounds can’t be clever) attend schools with 6th Forms, they are also in the 6th Forms whereas kids from 11-16 schools are more likely to go onto college than move to another school which has a sixth form….and those that do are likely to be high achievers wanting a traditional route and also willing to follow one that the majority from their school don’t follow.

Of course in areas with no 6th Forms in schools this won’t apply and of course there are some well known highly academic colleges which take massive numbers and get amazing academic results such as Hills Road, Cambridge. Anecdotal evidence will always find some mazingly bright kids going to college and doing fantastically, and avoiding the schools they could have gone to. This is all true, but broadly speaking and generally the OPs statement is correct - on a macro level, clever children aka those with higher GCSE performance are more likely to be found in schools and if you look at the prior attainment of all students starting 6th Form in schools compared to colleges, it will per head, be higher for schools.