Hills Road Sixth Form College (commonly referred to as HRSFC, Hills Road or just Hills) is a public sectorco-educationalsixth form college in Cambridge, England, providing full-time A-level courses for approximately 2400 sixth form students[1] from the surrounding area and a 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 is an extremely high achieving school, and is ranked 2nd for all Oxbridge University entrants, only after Westminster School, London [2]
History
Hills Road Sixth Form College was established on 15 September 1974[3] 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.[citation needed]
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 subjects such as English, modern languages and history; the Rob Wilkinson building housing the physics, chemistry and computer science departments was developed in 2004; in 2005 the Margaret Ingram Guidance Centre provided specialist tutorial accommodation; the Linda Sinclair building, opened in 2016, houses the mathematics and PE departments.[4] The Study Centre, opened in 2023, provides study areas and a rooftop space for staff.[5][6]
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.
Notable Alumni
This article's list of alumni may not follow Wikipedia's verifiability policy. Please improve this article by removing names that do not have independent reliable sources showing they merit inclusion in this article AND are alumni, or by incorporating the relevant publications into the body of the article through appropriate citations.(October 2023)
Cambridgeshire High School For Boys
Martin Amis – novelist and son of Sir Kingsley Amis, records in his autobiography "Experience" that he attended the school while his father Kingsley Amis and his mother Hilary were living off Madingley Road, where he was described by one headmaster as "unusually unpromising".[7]
Syd Barrett and Roger Waters of the rock band Pink Floyd;[8] there is a suggestion that the song Another Brick in the Wall Part II, written by Waters, which includes the lyrics "we don't need no education", bears reference to Waters' miserable stint endured whilst at the County High School for Boys.[9]
Sir John Bradfield – Founder of Cambridge Science Park, the first Science Park in Europe.[10][11]
Mark Tout, the British bobsleigher, was a member of the team which finished fifth at the Winter Olympics of 1994. In the team was second in the World Bobsleigh Championships. He subsequently made regular appearances as a team member on A Question of Sport.
In January 2014 Hills Road was named the "creme de la creme" of state schools by Tatler Magazine, and included in Tatler's list of thirty elite state school in the United Kingdom.[17] The 2009 Alps Report placed the College third in the sixth form college performance table and in the top 1% for all institutions.[18] According to the 2009 edition of the BBC's English school tables, the school's student have performed above average in A-Level examinations.[19]
The college has achieved an Ofsted rating of 'Outstanding' from its first inspection in 2001.[20]
