School sixth form vs sixth-form college vs FE college

Post-16 education in England runs through several quite different kinds of institution. Comparing them without knowing which is which produces nonsense.

England · 2024/25 · DfEPlain-English guide

The main types

School sixth forms — attached to a secondary school. Most are academies; some are community, foundation or voluntary aided schools. By far the most numerous type.
Sixth form colleges — standalone 16-19 institutions, typically large and academically focused.
16-19 academies and free schools — standalone post-16 providers under academy or free school arrangements.
General further education colleges — large multi-purpose institutions with substantial technical and vocational provision alongside academic courses.
Independent schools — fee-charging, selective in practice, overwhelmingly academic at post-16.
UTCs and studio schools — technically focused, usually small.
Sixth form centres and consortia — collaborative arrangements between institutions rather than single sites.

Why it changes the numbers

Scale differs enormously. The median sixth form college records around 1,835 A-level entries across a median of 35 subjects. The median sponsor-led academy records around 107 entries across 15 subjects. Both are post-16 institutions; they are not comparable units.

So does curriculum mix. Applied and technical qualifications are 72% of post-16 volume in general FE colleges and 3.6% in independent schools.

What follows for reading the data

Always read the denominator before the percentage. A category with 37 institutions will move several percentage points on a single institution’s decision. The Explorer prints the denominator beside every figure for exactly this reason, and omits categories with fewer than 25 institutions from charts while keeping them in the tables.

Related guides

Explained

How is post-16 subject provision measured?

The exact method behind the Explorer: which rows are used, how totals are counted, and what the denominator is.

Explained

What is a school URN?

The Unique Reference Number is the identifier that makes this Explorer possible. What it is and why names cannot be used instead.

Explained

Applied General, Tech Level and other academic — what’s the difference?

The four post-16 qualification families in the entry data, what sits in each, and why T Levels are counted separately.

Sources & methodology: All figures come from the DfE’s Schools and colleges — subject entries and grades and institution information data sets for academic year 2024/25 (final), joined on school URN. Only the Total exam entries category is used, so no entry is counted twice. Coverage is measured against the number of institutions with recorded entries in the relevant qualification family, not against all establishments. Sixth-form consortia and partnership centres are excluded from all totals, denominators and percentages, because DfE excludes them from its national figures; they remain listed and flagged in the Explorer. On that basis the England A-level total of 787,688 entries reconciles with the DfE national comparator to within 0.16%, and the four families together to within 0.15%. Institution coordinates come from Get Information About Schools. T Levels do not appear in this release; they are shown separately on the Explorer’s T Levels tab, from DfE provider-level T Level results, and are never added to any entry total here.

Last checked 17 August 2026. Observed provision is based on recorded exam entries. An institution with no recorded entries in a subject may still have offered it — see what subject provision means.