Hills Road Sixth Form College

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 A-level courses for approximately 2400 sixth form students 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.

History

Hills Road Sixth Form College was established on 15 September 1974 on the site of the former Cambridgeshire High School for Boys. It was founded as part of the transition to a comprehensive education system in Cambridgeshire, which replaced grammar schools and secondary moderns with a structure based on 11–16 comprehensive schools and sixth form colleges.

Since its foundation, the college has expanded its campus with a number of new facilities. The Sports and Tennis Centre opened in 1995. The Colin Greenhalgh Building, which houses English, modern languages, and history, was added soon after. In 2004, the Rob Wilkinson Building was developed to accommodate the physics, chemistry, and computer science departments. The following year, the Margaret Ingram Guidance Centre was opened to provide specialist tutorial space. The Linda Sinclair Building, opened in 2016, houses the mathematics and physical education departments. In 2023, the Study Centre was opened, offering additional student study areas and a rooftop staff facility.

Although the college had proposed a major campus redesign between 2010 and 2013, the scope of the project was reduced due to the economic climate. Nonetheless, upgrades were made in 2010 to administrative areas and teaching spaces, including additional classrooms for physical sciences, psychology, and art, an expanded and relocated staffroom, a partially refurbished library, a new resource area, and a rebuilt student social space.

In the early 1990s, responsibility for further education was transferred from local authorities to central government. Like other further education colleges, Hills Road began receiving direct public funding.

Notable former students

* Alison Balsom – trumpeter signed with EMI Classics
* Anthony Browne- Member of Parliament for South Cambridgeshire 2019-2024
* Catherine Banner – author
* Cavetown – singer, songwriter, musician, and YouTuber
* Benedict Cork – singer, songwriter, musician
* Milo Edwards – comedian, writer, and podcaster
* Alice Hewkin – actress
* Tom Hunt - Member of Parliament for Ipswich 2019-2024
* Hector Janse van Rensburg – watercolour painter, also known as '' Shitty Watercolour''
* Katie Rowley Jones – West End actress
* Tim Key – comedian and poet
* Dave Lewis – former Tesco CEO
* Nemone Metaxas – radio DJ
* Lucy Parker - professional footballer for Aston Villa W.F.C. and England women's national football team
* Mark Pettini, Essex County cricketer (and former captain). Former member of England Under-19 team
* Surie – Singer, representing the United Kingdom in the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest with the song "Storm"
* Ben Thapa – member of male singing quartet G4
* Tom Westley, Essex County England Test cricketer and captain of England Under-19 at the 2008 Under-19 Cricket World Cup
* Lydia White – actress and singer
*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".
*Syd Barrett and Roger Waters of the rock band Pink Floyd; 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.
*Sir John Bradfield – Founder of Cambridge Science Park, the first Science Park in Europe.
*Storm Thorgerson – co-founder of the Hipgnosis partnership, who designed record covers for artists including Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Genesis and Muse
* Charles Benstead, cricketer and Royal Navy officer
* Peter Fluck, artist and sculptor, co-creator of the satirical TV show '' Spitting Image''
* Sir Clive Granger, economist, won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2003
* Prof Freddy Marshall, marine biologist, and Professor of Zoology from 1972–7 at Queen Mary, University of London
* David Parker, a Western Australian politician who served as Deputy Premier from 1988 until 1990.
* Sidney Peters, Liberal MP from 1929 to 1945 for Huntingdonshire
* Sir Hayden Phillips (former Permanent Secretary, Department for National Heritage/Department for Culture, Media and Sport, Lord Chancellor's Department/Department for Constitutional Affairs)
* Sir David Robinson
* William T. Stearn, botanist
* Sir Kevin Tebbit (former Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Defence)
* William (Bill) Tutte, mathematical genius responsible for breaking the Tunny Code (the Lorenz Code), at Bletchley Park in 1941. Tunny (also known as Fish) was an extensively-used German Second World War cypher more complex than the Enigma code, used by Hitler personally. Tutte went to Cambridgeshire High School on a scholarship in 1928, aged 11, and went on to Trinity College, Cambridge in 1935. After the war he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Results and reputation

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. The 2009 Alps Report placed the College third in the sixth form college performance table and in the top 1% for all institutions. According to the 2009 edition of the BBC's English school tables, the school's student have performed above average in A-Level examinations.

The college has achieved an Ofsted rating of 'Outstanding' from its first inspection in 2001. OFSTED. Retrieved on 6 August 2019.

References

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Schools in Cambridge
Educational institutions established in 1974
Learning and Skills Beacons

Sixth form colleges in Cambridgeshire