How to find put about 16+ choices

[6SpringCats]

We live in a rural county and there seems to very limited post 16 choices. Ds wants to do a levels but at college not school - how do I find colleges that do a levels? I have done the usual searches but the only 3 in the whole county that I can find are all miles away and transport virtually non existent

Ask the school? Ours puts on events with local colleges etc but they should at least know where people tend to go from that school.

We have a similar problem as we are rural and unless you use the sixth forms at the local schools it's a pain to travel to colleges.

Is there anything on your county council website? Ours (Kent) has a section on post-16 choices. Where we live, you can only do A levels at 6th form, the college's just do vocational courses now (NVQs and what used to be BTEC).

Schools won’t have much info on colleges of further education for A levels. Schools are funded per pupil for A levels. It doesn’t make much sense to fund another institution per pupil to do the same thing. Colleges in rural counties usually do BTecs and vocational courses, eg catering, hairdressing, travel and tourism etc. They don’t have enough students wanting A levels to make it worth their while financially. You risk low quality teaching too as the lecturers don’t have to be qualified teachers. Only the people who were going to scrape a pass (or probably fail) did A levels at college in my days. The ones the schools didn’t want!

That's what I am finding - the local colleges only do vocational courses and it's only the (grammar) schools that do A levels