The Sixth Form Offer

The Sixth Form at Cowbridge School provides a stimulating, vibrant and friendly setting in which students can continue their academic education beyond GCSE examinations. The school offers a real breadth of choice of academic provision, complemented by a truly enviable range of extracurricular opportunities and facilities. 

When our students talk to us about the reasons they undertake their Sixth Form education at Cowbridge School, two words come up repeatedly - success and support. We offer students a broad and balanced curriculum made up of subjects they want to study, taught by specialist teachers who have a proven track record of helping students achieve their potential. Additionally, the Sixth Form Team ensures that students have the wider support they need to achieve success. 

Students are encouraged to take all of the opportunities offered to them; by doing so, they will thrive. This begins with taking responsibility for the additional independence offered to them by post-16 education.

Day-to-Day Life in the Sixth Form

The school day runs from 8.30am until 3pm. Year 12 students are expected to attend Registration Period with their Form Tutor every day at 8.30am, as this is when we run much of our Careers Programme and Wellbeing Provision. In order to continue the transition to life after Sixth Form education, Year 13 students are only required to attend Registration Period on Wednesdays. On all other days, they should arrive in school in plenty of time for their first lesson of the day. All Sixth Form students are free to leave the school site when they do not have a lesson; there is no requirement to stay until 3pm unless they have a timetabled lesson. Sixth Form students are expected to be in full school uniform whenever they are on the school premises. The School’s Uniform Policy can be viewed here.

Sixth Form students are free - and expected - to organise their time outside of lessons themselves. Most subjects have 8 or 9 hours a fortnight of teacher facilitated contact time, as part of the timetable and resource in the Sixth Form. This provides students with a significant number of unsupervised non-contact hours, during which they are expected to organise their time appropriately. Students will fail to fulfil their true potential if they rely exclusively on work done in lesson time. They must quickly adapt, therefore, to the new regime and exploit it fully! ‘Scholars’ is our catering facility exclusively for Sixth Form students and they can use the space to eat, drink, socialise and carry out group study which requires more animated discussion. The room just off ‘Scholars’ provides an additional space for quiet study, both independent and within a group, and there is a dedicated independent study room across the corridor from ‘Scholars’, for use when students need silence to focus and concentrate. 

As already stated, Sixth Form students are free to leave the school site when they do not have a timetabled lesson. However, they must do so responsibly by firstly signing out using the QR code that is displayed in many areas of the Sixth Form. This is to ensure that we have an up-to-date register of who is on site in the event of an emergency, for example, a fire. Additionally, Sixth Form students are expected to remember that they are ambassadors for our school; therefore, they should conduct themselves appropriately whenever they are out in the community and continue to represent the school values of ‘Ready, Respectful, Safe’. The QR code should also be used by students to sign back in if they return to school during the course same school day.

Sixth Form students, once they have passed their driving test, are allowed to drive to school and park in the school car park. However, they must use the ‘top’ car park (opposite C Block) and they must apply for and receive a parking permit in advance of parking on the school site. This can be done here.