Parents must wait for Fylde school sixth form review

Carr Hill High School and Sixth Form Centre at Kirkham cancelled is sixth form open evening planned for earlier this month as it announced a review of post-16 education there.

It came, headmaster Andrew Waller said, in a letter to parents issued at the time, as the school looked to “maintain financial stability and the quality of education moving forward.”

It added: “there may well be some difficult choices ahead.”

Mr Waller has stressed that the review will not have any effect on current post-16 students at Carr Hill.

He said: “The outcome will be made public in due course – I would imagine early December – and in the meantime we will provide the very best information, advice and guidance to our current Year 11 students.

“The review has come about as a result of a number of contributing factors including the need to maintain our financial stability in what are very challenging financial times for many schools across the country.

“While income has remained static, costs have effectively risen around eight per cent and it is very difficult for schools like ours to sustain a broad post-16 offer and what have traditionally been quite small class sizes for sixth form students without that impacting on provision elsewhere in the school.”

Lytham St Annes Technology and Performing Arts College is to close its sixth form next summer as an economy measure, leaving Carr Hill as the only provider of state sixth form education in Fylde.