Of the five schools in England that send the most students to Oxbridge, you may be surprised to learn that two of them are not prestigious independents. In fact, they are not even schools at all.

Apart from the world-famous public schools of Westminster, Eton and St Paul’s, Hills Road and Peter Symonds sixth-form colleges help their students to secure more offers from Oxford and Cambridge universities than every other 16-18 institution in the country (averaging 60 and 48 each year, respectively).

Sixth-form colleges have long been regarded as one of the crowning glories of England’s education system. And it’s certainly not just Cambridge’s Hills Road and Peter Symonds, in Winchester, that boast exam results that are the envy of many an independent school. A 2014 research paper by London Economics concluded that sixth-form college students achieved higher average A-level grades than students in school sixth-forms.

According to Ofsted’s most recent annual report, 81 per cent of sixth-form colleges were rated “good” or “outstanding” in their most recent inspection - a higher proportion than both schools and general FE colleges.

This is despite the fact that the funding environment they face is arguably harsher than for other types of provider. Since 2012-13, per-student funding has dropped by 15 per cent, according to Education Policy Institute research - a far bigger fall than the 9 per cent in FE colleges. And, of course, sixth-form colleges’ narrower, overwhelmingly 16-19-focused curriculum denies them the option of subsiding their provision using other income streams.

There has also been another way in which colleges have been penalised: the 2014 decision to cut the funding rate for 18-year-olds by 17.5 per cent meant that the oldest students received £700 less per-head funding than their 16- and 17-year-old classmates. There was no educational justification for this move. Michael Gove, the education secretary at the time, insisted that the “painful” decision had been “forced on us” by the Treasury. Just last month, the Augar review of post-18 education concluded that there was “no evidence to justify” this cut, and called for it to be reversed.

And yet, somehow, sixth-form colleges continually manage to excel. Indeed, it would appear that they have become a victim of their own success. With these institutions continuing to deliver strong exam results and impress Ofsted in the face of these brutal pressures, the government has in recent years appeared content to leave them operating on a shoestring budget.

But the issues facing sixth-form colleges go far beyond funding rates. They are tackling an existential crisis. As bastions of academic excellence primarily concerned with preparing young people in their local area for further study, they find themselves outside the government’s agenda for post-16 education. While some will dabble in T levels - the flagship new technical qualifications - they, along with apprenticeships, fall outside the core mission of a sixth-form college.

The struggle to find an identity for this sub-sector has resulted in its fragmentation. The decision to allow colleges to convert to become academies - and, in doing so, save themselves hundreds of thousands of pounds in VAT costs each year - was hailed as a game-changer for a stretched group of around 90 institutions. As it turns out, the majority have opted to cling on to the autonomy afforded by incorporated college status, with just 23 so far making the decision to - as some perceive it - return home to the world of schools (it was only with the establishment of incorporation in 1993 that they had to stop being schools at all).

“It blows the mind of policymakers that you can have a group of institutions called colleges that don’t really do a ‘college’ curriculum,” says James Kewin, deputy chief executive of the Sixth Form Colleges Association (SFCA).

Take Barton Peveril Sixth Form College in Eastleigh, Hampshire. Principal Jonathan Prest is comfortable admitting that it offers a “fairly traditional sixth-form education” for its 3,400 students, consisting of A levels and applied generals such as BTECs.

“We are trying to focus on what the core mission is, which is the sixth-form education for the people in our local community,” he says. “We have become very good at what we do and have focused on quality.”

What this also means is, as Prest bluntly puts it, “not darting after every possible option that is available to us, not broadening the curriculum offer to attract other learners, but focusing on A levels and applied generals”. He adds: “Over 60 per cent of students we have only do A levels, about 30 per cent do a mixed curriculum, and about 10 per cent only do applied generals.”

For the college, the strategy is simple: it knows what it is good at and it is focused on making sure it continues to do it well. And it is a strategy that seems to be working.

“We have seen rapid and significant growth in the number of students we have,” Prest explains. “That has been what has kept our head above water as we have seen our funding level off since 2010. So we have been able to go on investing.

“In the last 10 years, our student numbers have gone up 46 per cent, and the total funding has grown by just under 24 per cent. It is almost impossible to run a sixth-form college if you are not able to grow your student numbers.”

And this is a predicament faced by many of Prest’s peers: the 16-18 population has been steadily dropping for more than a decade. With sixth-form funding being allocated based on student numbers, the impact on colleges’ bottom lines has been significant.

Happily, perhaps, this trend is about to change. A bulge in the population of young people, which has already worked its way through primary schools to the secondary sector, is about to reach the sixth-form phase.

On one level, this is good news: more students equal (eventually) more funding, easing the pressure on cash-strapped colleges. But what this demographic shift highlights is that the crucial 16-19 stage of education - ignored, uncared for over so many years - is going to be expected to step up to the plate. For those teachers and leaders who have endured such a difficult period, this expectation among policymakers, and a lack of investment to help them move forward, sticks in the craw.

Does Prest feel unloved? “I think I do,” he says. “And I give the perspective of having seen the landscape change over the last 14 years. When I started, it was the era of the Foster review [published in 2005] and it was all about the capacity of the post-16 sector to transform the opportunities of young people. You felt you were at the forefront of education.”

Now, sixth-form colleges have ended up being shoved to the margins. In the post-austerity era, Prest says, the government has decided to focus its limited funding on “one or two great ideas” - specifically T levels and apprenticeships - rather than spreading it across existing provision.

“I am not hostile to funding high-quality vocational qualifications. I think that is very desirable,” he insists. “I also think it is really desirable that there is an apprenticeship offer. The trouble is that what little money there has been has gone into those initiatives. The majority of sixth-form colleges don’t offer any or many apprenticeships, and probably in future won’t offer many T levels. So it does feel as though we are now marginalised almost because of our own success.”

Sixth-form colleges also find themselves in a difficult position in terms of making themselves heard. This is perhaps surprising: while FE colleges have long struggled to make themselves heard over lobbyists from the universities and schools sectors, this has largely been down to the fact that a general FE college is often an unknown quantity for policymakers, politicians and journalists. The idea of a sixth-form college is, in some ways, much easier to understand: a college offering a traditional, A-level-based, sixth-form education. But to paint them as a uniform set of 16-19 institutions is to do them a disservice.

For starters, sixth-form colleges’ geographical spread is patchy. Out of around 80 that remain (including incorporated colleges and academy converters), there are clusters concentrated around London, Manchester and Hampshire. While the rest are dotted across England, from Durham to Sussex and Herefordshire to Norfolk, in large swathes of the country they are conspicuous by their absence.

There are no sixth-form colleges, for instance, in Cornwall or Devon, nor in Cumbria or North Yorkshire. Winning over sufficient backbench MPs to act as champions and agitators for the sixth-form college sector is made much harder by the fact that many parliamentarians don’t have one of them on their doorstep.

And the nature of the curriculum on offer varies hugely. Some fit the model of the best-known examples such as Hills Road and Peter Symonds: selective, academically elite institutions with stringent admissions criteria, often with sprawling catchment areas and huge demand for places.

Others, however, don’t select; instead, they offer a much more general form of education closer to the general FE model, and cater for a diverse intake of students. A prime example is Huddersfield New College. The area of West Yorkshire that the college serves, Kirklees, is in the bottom third of local authorities in terms of deprivation; a quarter of students are eligible to receive a means-tested bursary.

The college has excellent results at A level, with a 100 per cent pass rate for A-level and vocational courses, despite the college not academically selecting its students at 16.

Students can choose to study either A levels, BTECs or a combination of the two, with 83 per cent of learners following some form of vocational course at levels 1-3.

The college is number one in the National Centre for Diversity’s 2019 Top 100 Index and was commended by Ofsted for its approach, with inspectors saying that “learners celebrate and welcome their differences and feel extremely comfortable at college”. And in March it was crowned the sixth-form college of the year at the Tes FE Awards 2019 (see box, page 63).

It is the college’s work on delivering a mixed curriculum to a diverse cohort of students that makes it stand out, according to principal Angela Williams. “We have a very broad and very comprehensive curriculum that allows us to bring in 16-year-olds from school and start them in the right place for them,” she says.

“A lot of the young people we work with come from a background where they face disadvantage on a daily basis. Part of our role is to give them a fairer future and give them opportunities for success equal to their more advantaged peers.

“The majority come at 16, they do A levels or vocational qualifications and do two years with us. But we have had young people here at 16 and they have not left until they are aged 20, because they have started at level 1. Those young people just need a bit longer with us.” Out of the college’s 2,450 students, around 900 progress to university each year.

But the college’s successes, and its solid financial health, do not mean that it is immune from pressure to cut costs. “Minority subjects come under scrutiny,” Williams says.

She argues that, as a group, sixth-form colleges have found it difficult to make their voice heard for several reasons. “I think we have struggled because we are small in number - and a number of colleges have converted to academies so we are now even smaller in number,” she says. “We are not evenly distributed geographically and that makes it a more difficult sector to represent. And we have got a school sector, a university sector and even an FE sector that have a much more vocal lobby, because they have the numbers.”

The government’s failure to fully understand and acknowledge the important role that sixth-form colleges play is also a source of frustration for Bill Watkin, SFCA chief executive. And policymakers’ blinkered outlook poses some very real risks, he fears.

“It is frustrating that the government seems to want to talk only about T levels when that is only one part of the 16-18 picture,” he says. “We have to recognise that there are lots of ways of closing the skills gap and we have to make sure we don’t put all our eggs in one basket, and that we don’t protect that basket by getting rid of all the others.”

For Prest, the danger for colleges would be in chasing the attention and funding that is on offer through T levels, and losing sight of their core mission.

Those colleges that have struggled have often been the ones that have “pursued the hares”, he says. “The temptation is to let that influence the decisions we have to make about what are the right courses for our students. We should always make those decisions on the basis of whether our core purpose is served by those things.”

But, for Watkin, that’s not to say that the limit of sixth-form colleges’ ambition should be to carry on as usual. Their role, between the worlds of schools and FE colleges, could in fact allow them to shape high-quality education across the sectors, and take on a leading role in supporting educational excellence in schools and FE colleges.

“Colleges play a really important role in system leadership,” he says. “Partly as a consequence of academisation and partly because of a general opening up of the sector, sixth-form colleges are playing an increasing part in system leadership.”

And, for Huddersfield New College’s Williams, a new role as the beacons and guardians of high-quality education is one that sixth-form colleges are perfectly suited for. “I think we are the shining star of post-16. We are the sector leaders in level 3 BTECs and A levels. As a small sector, we are the elite. We are not elitist, but we are the elite.”

Stephen Exley is FE editor and Julia Belgutay is deputy FE editor at Tes. Stephen tweets @stephenexley and Julia tweets @JBelgutay

This article originally appeared in the 28 June 2019 issue under the headline “We’re not elitist, but we are the elite”