Hills Road Sixth Form College | |
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Address | |
Hills Road Cambridge, England, CB2 8PE |
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Coordinates | 52°11′17″N 0°08′07″E / 52.188151°N 0.135297°ECoordinates: 52°11′17″N 0°08′07″E / 52.188151°N 0.135297°E |
Information | |
School type | Sixth Form College |
Motto |
Latin: Virtute et fide By virtue and faith |
Religious affiliation(s) | No religious affiliation |
Established | 1974 |
Opened | 1900 as Cambridgeshire High School for Boys |
School district | In co-operation with Cambridge CAP Partnership |
Authority | Directly government managed in co-operation with Cambs LEA |
Specialist | No specialism — Designated Outstanding |
Ofsted number | 130615 |
Principal | Linda Sinclair |
Teaching staff | 165 (sixth form) |
Gender | Mixed |
Age range | Generally 16-19 (full-time), all ages (evening classes) |
Average class size | 22 |
Language | English |
Hours in school day | Variable |
Classrooms | 94 |
School colour(s) | Maroon and sky blue |
Sports | Badminton, basketball, cricket, football, hockey, netball, rounders, rowing, rugby, squash, tennis, volleyball |
Nickname | "Hills" |
Rival | Traditionally Long Road Sixth Form College |
Test average | 98% pass, 48.8% A grade |
School roll | c.2,096 full-time, c.3,675 part-time |
Newspaper | The Phoenix |
Student Council | http://www.myhrsfc.co.uk/ |
Website | http://www.hillsroad.ac.uk/ |
Hills Road Sixth Form College (commonly referred to as HRSFC, Hills Road or just Hills) is a public sector co-educational sixth form college in Cambridge, England, providing full-time AS and A-level courses for approximately 2,100 sixth form students from the surrounding area and a wide variety of courses to around 4,000 part-time students of all ages in the adult education programme, held as daytime and evening classes.
Hills Road Sixth Form College was established on 15 September 1974 on the site of the former Cambridgeshire High School for Boys, when education in Cambridgeshire was reorganised on a comprehensive basis, and grammar schools and secondary moderns were replaced by a system of (mainly) 11-16 comprehensive schools and sixth form colleges.
Since then, the college has expanded from its original single building, with the addition of the Sports and Tennis Centre in 1995; the Colin Greenhalgh building, which houses most arts subjects such as English, Modern Languages and History; The Rob Wilkinson building housing the Physics, Chemistry, and PE departments was developed in 2004; in 2005 the Margaret Ingram Guidance Centre provided specialist tutorial accommodation. Although the College previously had ambitious plans for a major redesign between 2010 and 2013, the economic crisis reduced the scope of the plans: in 2010 the College administrative areas were redesigned, more classrooms added in the Physical Sciences, Psychology and Art departments, the staffroom enlarged and relocated, the library partially refurbished, an extra resource area built to compensate for the space used to build new classrooms and the student social area rebuilt.
In the early 1990s responsibility for further education was removed from local authorities (as part of reforms aimed at reducing the level of the council tax), and Hills Road like other colleges moved to direct funding from central Government.
Hills Road had been building up a reputation for academic excellence, mainly through a standard set by the old Grammar School, but this developed under Colin Greenhalgh, who led the College to obtain the Queens Anniversary Prize in Education and become the first institution nationally to become "Designated Outstanding" and thus win freedom from OFSTED.