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?

OP says the locals widely don't value further education; so no surprise there isn't provision if almost no demand.

But if the opportunities for study are limited what is there to value?

Lack of opportunity creates a culture of lack of expectation. What purpose in studying hard at any stage if students cant see it leading anywhere better than they would get to with less effort?

I work in a school in Medway - there are plenty that do A-levels including my own. The local college has stopped doing them but does BTECs including the extended diploma which is the equivalent to A-levels and many students go on to university from here.

An adult bus pass bought on a phone is roughly £70 for 4 weeks but there is a student pass that can be bought by parents that is less, I believe.

@Bestseller I think I may have lived near your area previously. We lived in the affluent area nearby but having worked in the school I knew that they weren’t great anyway. Better than the surrounding area but for example the schools intake was roughly the same as the school I went on to work at and the results that were heralded as amazing simply were not (60% of children got 5 good GCSEs compared to 90%). I ended up moving as I didn’t see there was anything for DS in the long run.

You bring up another point about the children’s parents not wanting to buy their children a bike. I fail to see how that is an issue with the education provision. The children are being disadvantaged by their parents.

@GnomeDePlume I agree but what came first? We can’t blame a lack of opportunity in the South East. There are so many opportunities but there doesn’t seem to be hunger in many children to succeed.

I just can’t get over this, 200,000 is the same size as York, or Luton. That’s horrific if it’s right.

It’s appalling and does nothing to improve the life chances of children growing up in straitened circumstances. It creates a very clear ‘them and us’ attitude that destroys aspiration.
Our local towns have populations of 26, 000 (with two very good sixth forms and a seven minute train ride to another high achieving Catholic sixth form) and 13, 000 with one state sixth form and a nine minute train ride to another. There are also several independent sixth forms and the larger conurbation also has an FE college that offers A levels.

It is unfair that the more affluent communities are better resourced. It is unfair that the assumption locally is that children will go to RGs generally whilst poorer children are told (explicitly and subliminally) to go down the vocational route.

Faithless12 Children who are disadvantaged by their parents need schools and systems to,overcome that barrier. With the right attitude and resources it can be done and bright poor children from disadvantaged backgrounds can be supported to high academic achievements. It needs more than a bus pass though.

I think that's really shit. I wondered if it was Clacton but even Clacton has colleges and a 6th form. It's shocking what had happened to our education system

Eight miles or 25 minute journey will be what many others undertake. Would a bike be a good investment?

@Faithless12 it is difficult to know what came first. I dont know OP's area. In my area the local industry declined as the production moved overseas. What we are now is a warehouse and shopping area. Employment is therefore at low income levels. The local culture operates at a low income level. Many people seldom leave their local area as it is expensive to do so. Live local, work local, marry local, stay local. Children are born into this cycle.

The way out of the cycle is education and mobility. To access a good range of educational choices students need to have transport. Public transport is woeful and expensive (return ticket to 'local' college is £9.30/day).

Our education situation is the opposite of the OP's in that the local consortium sixth form offers A levels and a very limited range of vocational courses (hair/beauty, motor vehicle maintenance). This pushes students who would have been better suited to vocational courses into taking A levels which may not be suitable.

Not having educational choices is the issue.

Not just you - very similar here with no subsidised transport for sixth formers. You have to travel to the nearest town which is a good 15 miles away. The secondary has just restarted its sixth form but it will take a while to get sorted properly and my DC refuses to go there because they had such a poor school experience (changed trust now thankfully).

@IalwayswantedtobeBeth in my area that would be 8 miles on unlit dual carriageways with no cycle paths. Only suitable for the foolhardy.

we have the consortium college set up in our area. DD2 has just been through it. It is making the best of a bad job and is without doubt sub optimal.

GnomeDePlume that's worrying as you mention pretty much all our main concerns. We planned to look closely at what options we had anyway when we get closer to A-levels- but I think are options aren't as varried as we'd like.

OP, can you tell us the Town?

I agree that it sounds awful.

Where I lived growing up I had to travel 10 miles by bus every day to go to a school with a sixth form as the nearer one (still a 4-mile bus journey) had no sixth form and that's approaching 30 years ago.

That doesn’t sound right, OP. Which town is it? Is it the case that the council views your town and the town 8 mile away as being joined? (Like Brighton and Hove for example?)
8 miles isn’t a problem - many people have to travel further - the problem is if transport provision isn’t free for those who need it. I would start campaigning for free/easy transport rather than 6th form provision in your town. 6the form provision in schools can be lowsy. Better to have larger, better specialist sixth form colleges that are accessible to all than a poor provision which happens to be walking distance from your house.

List to trawl thru.
Medway was a decent fit since Wikipedia said only one 6FC.
But another poster says Medway has heaps of A-level options.
Mystery.

I'm in a non-deprived area and we have the same set up.

@CherryPavlova but some children are disadvantaged but live in affluent homes. How can we catch them all? Serious question. Some of the worst neglect of children I saw were from well off homes.

This is where the assisted places scheme was extremely useful. I know my school had 6th formers who were there because they didn't have family support and it was quite the distance to the 6th form college they were assigned to. Back in the 90s they had to have 6 GCSEs grade B or above with at least an A in each subject they were taking at A'Level. Every single 6th former left to good universities doing solid choices for their chosen path. Support from school stopped at 21. It really was a great way to break the cycle of poverty and lots of my friends have.

But if it's Medway don't the grammar schools have sixth forms which will be open to all at 16+ (at least my school was if you had the requisite GCSE grades).

Faithless12 indeed they can but those disadvantages are rarely down to finances and are far fewer between. Most disadvantages are associated with poverty. Mental illness is more prevalent in poverty. Lower academic achievement for children with similar potential are associated with poverty. Lower aspirations are associated with poverty.

As one of the G20 nations, it is very sad that we are failing to ensure all children have the resources to succeed - be that public libraries, Sure Start centres, free instrumental tuition and instrument loan, insisting that grammar intake are reflective of their local communities and prioritise poorer children, strengthened AimHigher programmes and transport subsidy where necessary. It’s never going to be a level playing field but we should jolly well,be trying to flatten out as many bumps as possible.

cherry I know exactly what faithless is talking about. I saw it myself when I was at school. There is an assumption that because there is money to pay for an education there is no neglect. Sadly that's not true. I saw parents with drug and alcohol addiction. I saw parents who were stuck in abusive marriages because they couldn't afford to leave. There was also an interesting problem with girls being expected to become housewives themselves so no encouragement of studying existed. Smart girls completely stunted in growth yet you wouldn't know because the surface looks great. There were girls I went to school with from very wealthy upper class families who left at 16 barely able to read or write because their parents didn't get involved with their DCs education. That wasn't deemed important.

Want2bSupermum. I don’t think you’re wrong. Of course there are negligent and neglectful parents in all income brackets. On the whole the upper middle children are protected a bit nowadays by independent education. It still exists and in some families education of girls is not seen as a priority but that doesn’t mean the challenges of living in poverty in a very poor community are lessened.

@bigKiteFlying students can succeed in a consortium sixth form setting but it takes determination. DD2 is now at a RG university studying a science subject.