2 Year A Level Courses – Sixth Form College in London

Who joins Bales Sixth Form College?

Bales Sixth Form College takes students who have completed their GCSEs. Roughly one quarter of the Sixth Form students come from Bales School, and the remainder come from other schools to join Year 12 here. We also take students who wish to retake Year 12, whether due to unsatisfactory results or a wish to change subjects.

Study practice

When starting Year 12, we are very aware of the need to direct students regarding how to study and to guide them in ways where they learn to study. This is done by providing a continuing process of suitable input from teachers dealing with the different subjects. It can take at least the first year of the A-level programme for a student to achieve a good level of skill in the study process, and we do this in a very positive way while being careful not to create artificial pressures.
Staff are often available during the day for individual meetings with students who need extra pointers regarding the latest homework – these talks can clear possible delays in a student’s work schedule. Our staff are very experienced in teaching, many have higher degrees and several work for examination bodies such as Edexcel.

A Level Results and Achievement

Examination success today is measured by league tables and number of A grades. This is a national phenomenon, and has altered everyone’s thinking. Taking students of varying abilities and attempting to make each once improve by a significant amount, akin to sports training, has long been our aim. We offer something significantly good to the mid-level student who, in another learning environment, might come out with low grades. Over a long period of time, we have made more of students’ abilities than many others could do, by setting standards, and working with each student in a more uplifting way than they might have experienced before. Instead of taking a top mark as bench mark, and seeing students fall short of that, we look at what they can do and aim to make them do better than they might think they can, by one grade, two grades or more. The starting point is for the student to have full commitment and genuine interest in the subjects to be studied.

Of course, this approach also works for the more gifted students. Our most successful student had three and a half years here, took GCSEs and achieved A in each of six A-levels, with a seventh at grade B. He entered medical school at age 17. He was gifted in mathematics, and success in other subjects grew out of this. His programme here was planned by us right from the start, enabling him to achieve that success.