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Original poster

SW London: how hard are 6th form admissions? Would you avoid a secondary without 6th form?

78 replies

PForParent · 11/03/2025 15:12

Not sure if a London-only forum might be more appropriate for this question.
One of the state secondary schools we are considering is Hurlingham Academy in Fulham.
It does not have a 6th form on site; it basically sends students to another school of the same trust, but that would be 45 - 60 minutes away by public transport.

We are trying to look into 6th form admissions, to get a sense for how hard or not it is to be admitted to a 6th form at another school, but we aren't finding much information.

  • Do some schools use distance as one of the admission criteria for 6th form? Graveney doesn't, but for other schools (Chestnut) we cannot find the criteria online
  • Are any statistics on applications and admissions published anywhere? They are published for Y7 admissions, but I haven't seen anything for 6th form admissions. I guess we must ask the schools directly?
OP posts:
Original poster
PForParent · 11/03/2025 15:41

@xmasdealhunter What do you mean by specialised? There are 6th form schools which specialise in certain subjects (like King's Math School in Vauxhall, or the Imperial College London Maths school in Barnet), but being admitted there is no walk in the park.

Basically our reservation is that there is another school which we like less but which has a 6th form, so we are unsure which we should rank higher in our options.

Taking between 45 - 60 minutes by bus (depending on traffic) to go to the 6th form of the other school of the same trust risks being too much of a nightmare

OP posts:
xmasdealhunter · 11/03/2025 15:37

Pick the school that is right for now, and worry about next steps later. You've always got the option of specialised sixth form colleges (William Morris Sixth Form for example) and you've then not got to worry about existing pupils having allocated spaces etc.

OhCrumbsWhereNow · 11/03/2025 15:33

I think it can be harder.

KFS for example have 200 places in 6th form and ring-fence 160 of those for their existing pupils (450 in each of Y7-11). 40 places are available for external applicants. They are allocated based on GCSE scores with the minimum requirement being 6 x 7-9 including English and Maths, and in case of over subscription they add up the GCSE scores and rank applicants.

I don't know if that is overall oversubscription or subject dependent - ie if you wanted to do Film Studies, Music and Art would you need to have the same score as someone wanting Maths, Physics and History as I assume some subjects are more popular than others.

You do need to factor in what your own child is likely to do. I assumed back in Y5 that mine would be following a traditional path of A levels - turns out that doesn't fit with her plans at all! So I would pick the school that is right for the next step and not worry too much about 6th form.

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