Queen Ethelburga’s College offers a proven, very successful, 6th form route to University. Over the years the number of students choosing Queen Ethelburga’s for their Year 12 & 13, Sixth Form education has grown and the academic results achieved means Queen Ethelburga’s College is ranked by "The Times" newspaper as one of the top 5 most academically successful co-ed, independent schools in the north. We achieve this with students with a broad spread of ability who follow a wide range of A-Level courses. The majority of these 6th form students cope well with 4 or 5 different A-Level subjects. We already offer over 22 A Level courses but realised that we could do more...

A number of Year 11 students leave the College each year, not because they want to, but because we did not run a range of non A-Level alternatives more suited to their differing abilities. As any independent school knows you need to have sufficient demand to run any course and there were insufficient numbers involved to justify changing things.

We then began to realise all over the country there were students who wanted an Independent School 6th Form education. They wanted to have superb 6th Form boarding facilities. They wanted a first class education but they did not want to follow the usual 4 or 5 A-Level subjects that were the norm.

At independent schools all over the UK these students could try and follow 2 or 3 A-Levels but often ended up dropping a subject or ceasing any more study of it beyond AS Level. They lost motivation. School life was not something to enjoy, but something to endure instead. What alternative are there? For such students their choice was extremely limited to a few independent specialist schools and of course Colleges of Further Education which are not independent schools. Colleges of Further Education rarely, if ever, offer boarding facilities and the handful that may, have certainly not invested in the high quality we had. Students forced to turn to Colleges of Further Education found the majority of students at such Colleges had not been independently educated. The difference was painfully apparent to them ~ like chalk and cheese. Many such students would achieve poor results even at their non A-Level vocational choices. They may not do well enough to gain a place at University and if they did, they stood a possibly higher chance of not completing the course and failing.

Any thoughts such students had of a satisfying financially well paid career slowly faded and they lowered their expectation of what they could achieve time and time again.

We decided it was time the independent school sector offered a real alternative. The Collegiate Foundation could be the answer.