Welcome to the Sixth Form at Vandyke

Vandyke Sixth Form is a place where students can aspire and are supported to achieve their full potential. The success of the Sixth Form is based on a number of important ingredients including high expectations, excellent teaching, high quality support and guidance and rigorous monitoring.

However, just as important is our ethos which is based on a number of important values and attitudes that we support our students to develop. We expect them to be ambitious, self-motivated, to be resilient, have integrity, be respectful and aim for personal and academic excellence.

We are incredibly proud of the outstanding achievement of our students. Over the past six years students of all abilities have performed consistently in the top 10-20% of all students nationally. This has allowed many of our students to secure places on a range of university courses including Russell Group and Oxbridge institutions. In addition, students have secured higher level degree apprenticeships with top employers such as Santander, Ernst and Young, UBS, VW, Vauxhall, BE Aerospace and many more.

A typical programme of study for a Year 12 student is as follows:

Y12 Typical Programme of Study at Vandyke Upper School

At Vandyke we offer a broad and aspirational curriculum including a range of A-Level and BTEC Level 3 qualifications with over 30 courses. You can read more about the courses we offer and the application process here. Students are able to re-take GCSE mathematics and receive specialist teaching. Most students achieve a grade 4 or above by the time they leave, or a pass in Functional Skills.

There is a rich experience curriculum offered by Vandyke Sixth Form including a robust tutorial programme. This is delivered daily for 20 minutes in Year 12 and in weekly hour-long sessions in Year 13. There is also the opportunity for weekly enrichment sessions, a fortnightly assembly slot often with external speakers and an opportunity to undertake social action programmes, an enterprise project, EPQ, Duke of Edinburgh or Sports Leadership to help their skills development.

Every student has the opportunity to undergo a work placement or virtual work experience for one week in the Summer Term of Year 12. This is part of a broader programme designed to offer interactions with employers including specialist talks, careers fairs, workshops and professional mornings.

Students receive 9 hours a fortnight for each of their chosen subjects. This is taught by specialist staff. In addition students’ independent study is supervised. Where students are identified as needing additional support they have weekly meetings with a Learning Mentor.