Our Sixth Form: a unique experience

Bournemouth Collegiate School has the only co-educational independent sector sixth form in the Bournemouth and Poole area.  It has a number of unique features designed especially to ensure that it can offer the very best opportunities to all students; these features will become apparent as you review the site. 

The school offers a large range of subjects; it has developed a unique structure that resembles school based and college based environments; and sixth formers are supported by an extensive enrichment programme, small classes, specialised support for university entry, and a wide choice of extracurricular clubs and activities, including career mentors and work experience.

The school’s results are excellent, and it is our expectation that every student will gain access to their chosen course at the first choice university, that is the norm at BCS. Typically each year 25% of BCS leavers gain entry into the Russell Group of Universities, including some to Oxford and Cambridge. 95% of all our leavers move on to higher education, the small remaining minority take gap years or move directly to employment.  

The sixth form at BCS adopts a friendly atmosphere based on mutual respect, individuality and support.  Our close-knit community values encourages diversity and fosters academic and social self-development.  Our subjects are taught in a fastidious laid-back fashion but with excellent quality of teaching, which allows students to communicate freely with their tutors.  They can, therefore, offer help and advice in other matters as well as those concerning our education.

A sixth former summed it up as follows: “We find that all our teachers are incredibly inspiring and passionate about their subjects.  Our tutors always encourage us to pursue academic achievements to the best of our abilities, and this is easy for us as we have such small tutor groups where we can get individual help, but at the same time they’re large enough to allow us to compete with others.  The members of staff will never hesitate to spend their free time answering our questions and helping students.  Our relaxed timetable ensures that we have sufficient time for our activities unrelated to academics, and there are so many of those at BCS.  I have really found the school’s excellent virtual learning environment (VLE) a huge help in my sixth form studies, it is brilliant.”

Many of the sixth formers are boarders or utilise the boarding facilities when they want to stay late after school to work with friends or teachers.  Indeed, many day sixth formers regularly pop into the boarding house for a night as they enjoy joining in with the huge variety of evening activities for boarders. 

The school has an extensive transport network that enables the many day pupils that come in from a wide catchment area to reach the school quickly. A mainline train station is 5 minutes’ walk form the school, and main bus stops are minutes form our sixth form centre.