To think it's outrageous that there is nowhere in my town of 200000 people offering Alevels

[Bestseller]

There no getting away from it, this is a deprived area and with educational provision like this there is little prospect of social mobility.

We have 5 large secondary schools. Not one of them has a sixth form. There is a further education college but it has merged with two other colleges in surrounding towns and ours now only offers vocational qualifications. To do A levels you either need to go to sixth form at a school 8 miles in one direction (with rubbish public tramsport links) or a 25 min (expensive) train journey in the other direction.

Obviously for committed students with supportive families , that's not insurmountable but another example of how life is even harder for those whose opportunities are more limited in the first place.

Is this usual in deprived areas? Who do I need to take it up with?

8 miles or a 25 min train journey doesn't sound too bad to me either.
You can get a free second hand bicycle on the internet.

Yes, you can Walking dead, but do you honestly believe you would have done that at 15/16 without parental support, to go an do something none of your schoolmates were going to do, that would have seen you go to a school where you didn't "belong" when everyone else you knew was doing a L2 vocational course locally?

Some do, but most don't and that's why social mobility in this country is declining .

This is terrible. I teach A levels in a relatively deprived Southern city of the size you describe and am horrified that you don't have an option of a local sixth form college. Complete social immobility. Worth contacting your MP??

As a start could you contact local paper? Bus fares cost should be easily checked. A season ticket for a school 8 miles away where I live is £931 a year for example.

This type of bus subsidy is needed £3 a week for a 7 day anywhere pass and money refunded for 100% attendance.
www.burnley.ac.uk/school-leaver/Student-Support

I can well believe it.

Similar in my area except that A levels are local and vocational courses bar beauty are at the 'local' FE college which is a 1.5 hour bus ride away (plus cost).

Those saying cycle obviously have no idea about cycling between towns without street lights through the winter. Our major routes arent fully lit and arent suitable for cyclists. The minor routes are poorly maintained (pot holes a plenty) and are completely unlit.

DontCallMeCharlotte that sounds very like the area I grew up in. It was a rural area made up of small scattered communities. My secondary was 5 miles away.

In the whole area there were no secondaries with VI form, instead everybody who wanted to do A levels went to the VI Form College. In my case it was more than 15 miles away.

Fair enough in those days the bus was provided free (there were no alternatives as no other public transport!) but it meant I had to leave the house at 7.30am for a 9am start and didn't get home until after 5.30pm.

Not ideal but I really can't see how it could have been otherwise given the area we lived in.

It is very bad, not just the fact it is harder but also the impression it is very easy to get of academics 'not being for the likes of us'.

This has been the situation in Knowsley for some time now. I have posted about it a lot over the years. My home borough (not Knowsley) is the worst for social mobility in England. I despair.

Yes,.That's exactly it OddBoots. Children in this town grow upnthinking it's highly unusual and you have to be super clever to do A levels. Children in the next town just assume they will stay on at school. E.g in a school with a yr7 intake of 180, c.130 "stay on"

Well indeed. It's absolutely a statement that A levels "aren't for the likes of us" if there are 5 secondary schools and a college, none of which bother to offer A levels.

It's a different situation from living so rurally that you have to travel 8 miles to the nearest school/college... but when you get there it offers A levels.

The distance is the same; the dynamic isn't.

Yanbu. My local town is smaller than yours, we have 4 primary schools, 1 secondary and no sixth form or college provision. Nearest college is 7 miles away. I'm dreading my dc being old enough to go to college, it's going to be so expensive to get them there on the bus. 2 of them used to have disabled bus passes but they went a few months ago.

Sadly I'm not surprised. I have no idea why as a society we aren't investing in our DC and their education. It might be worth talking to your local catholic parish. They also have funds available for education and it's this sort of thing that they get involved with. With writing to your MP, cc the shadow minister for education. That normally gets their attention. Frank Field isn't my MP but I send quite a few letters to him. I have written about 10 letter to him regarding the issues I have with legalized prostitution in Leeds. His office has replied to all of them.

I was talking about Knowsley too, but I was under the impression that it was only one year that there was no A-Level provision as I thought since KCC linked with St. Helen's College, there was limited A-Level provision at KCC? Their website seems to confirm my understanding. But yeah, the situation is grim and still v. limited in Knowsley. My DH was lucky to have gone to a good school in Liverpool and stayed on at the sixth-form there (and eventually to an ex-poly uni in the midlands) but he also came from a family that supported FE/HE and where his aunt and uncle had both gone to university, which certainly wasn't the case for most of the children in his primary school/local neighbourhood.

Also, I should add that the only reason DH could continue going to sixth-form in Liverpool was because he got EMA - he paid for us his bus travel out of that money. Otherwise he wouldn't have been able to as his DM couldn't afford the travel and his DF was unwilling to pay for it.

I think this is something that should be a campaign about since the 16-18 demographic is one of the most maligned and neglected demographics out there. I was from a comfortable middle class home in a resonably deprived area but even then I felt that in terms of costs should I have been forced to move out I would have had adult-sized resposibilities on a child-sized budget. In terms of costs you are treated as an adult but you cannot vote or claim benefits unless you are an emancipated minor.
There is too much cosy thinking (or no thinking) that all parents want whats best for their children or that they know and in the case of deprived areas what's a bright teenager with little or no parent support supposed to do. There are so many barriers as how are they supposed to get a job and a place to live during A-levels?
Also bus fares have far outstripped wage increases in the last 10 years and there are so many places where bus servies are unreliable and roads impassible to cycles - that and the little detail that most of the time 16-18 year olds are liable for adult fares without a travel card -which is seldom free anyway!

Where I lived was 12 miles in one direction or 9 in the other.

It’s about normal isn’t it?

do you honestly believe you would have done that at 15/16 without parental support
A 16 yo who really wanted to would definitely.
A child who didn't want to, wouldn't bother, even if the 6th form was only 4 miles away.

I am guessing there is only vocational qualifications on offer because that is what the demand is for. If there is no demand for A-Levels then no reason to have a school to offer them.

You can also still go to university having done vocational qualifications.

Are you in Norfolk?

This is also an issue for anyone doing engineering /physical science related A levels/NVQs since along with the lack of teachers these types of A levels are more expensive to each considering they need specific labs and facilities.

The point is, it’s not normal within an area which has such a big population.
And I agree, there are always people that will say I walked barefoot 25 miles a day to do alevels and I turned out ok.
But the biggest problem in the country is deprived areas where expectations of success are so low. And it becomes a vicious cycle.

It’s outrageous that the lees afflient are being cast aside while the wealthy pay lip service to social mobility. Full price bus or train fares but employers can pay a pittance to the under 18s.

Unfortunately I can believe that.

I live in Bristol and in the poorest parts of south Bristol there is no sixth form provision and students who want to study A-Levels have to get buses, the costs of which can be prohibitive for their families. These children don't see A-Levels as being for people like them and they've never even considered university as an option.

I think it's awful that you have to stay in education until 18, yet travel for that age group is not free. The year before I started 6th Form all those from my village got a free bus pass (as we were 6 miles away). In my year we had to pay £30 a term for a bus pass (less than a quarter of the cost of paying for each trip- especially since our bus company said we were adults at 14) - not a lot for my family but too much for others.

You are totally right to be furious about this - what a disgrace. They should be shipping the wealthy students to your area rather than expecting the poorer students to be the ones to travel. Aspiration is one of the hardest things to nurture. It certainly won’t thrive in those situations.

And for the people saying get a bike - you haven’t a clue.

I can't believe the "get on your bike" comments. The 1980s called and tebbitt wants his attitudes back!

Walkingdead, that is exactly the issue. Demand is for vocational courses because these children grow up believing that is their place. And many many 'not bothered' children from affluent families do stay on for A levels because equally, that's what's expected for them.