Our students

Students travel on our subsidised buses from Gloucestershire, Swindon, North Wiltshire, South Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire. Most students travel some distance to get here which means that they are highly motivated and want to succeed. They have chosen to travel past many other providers to get to us because they want the special experience of a proper Sixth Form College.

How do our students perform after College?

90% of students are on Level 3 programmes, with the majority doing A-levels and a rapidly growing proportion doing T-Levels. We try and give students access to the same broad enrichment programme and pastoral support.

93% of students go onto university, apprenticeship programmes or full time work.

95% of students gained their 1st choice of university (above the national average of 82%)

In 2025, 193 students gained a place at one of the 30 most selective universities.

Cirencester College hold Parents’ Evenings twice a year to provide feedback and discuss any issues. We also continue to develop a range of on-line tools to improve communication further.

We believe in our learners. We have very high expectations of every learner that joins the Cirencester family and we set the standard high too.

Our Staff

Our lecturers are well qualified academically or in their vocational fields. Many also work as external examiners. Lecturers are grouped in subject teams in Faculties. Team working is strong and lecturers frequently share best practice within and between groups. We have a strong tradition of staff development including weekly teaching and learning sessions which many staff attend and where sessions are often led by their peers.

Our contracts contain many features which are more common in Sixth Form Colleges For example, a higher pay scale than most FE, reducing the number of directed days to 195 (plus 10 self-directed professional development days) and one of the lowest annual teaching loads of 815 hours. Some lecturers are also tutor’s and most contribute to enrichment and/or out of class learning.

We have a strong track-record of ‘growing our own staff’. In addition to training a majority of our lecturers we have also developed many of them in promoted posts. Internal promotions have included Vice Principals, Faculty Heads and our Senior Professionals who support the Faculty Heads. Our staff development model is designed to give people the opportunity to gain skills, understanding and responsibility so that we can continue this pattern.

Learning and the student experience is also very well supported by our teams of support staff, most of who are based centrally in the student journey unit in the hub or in our learning support centre. Support services pride themselves on their excellent customer care which is widely recognised by parents and students. We take the view that all our staff are responsible for student experience.

Our Campus

The College adjoins the early eighteenth-century Cirencester Park and is a 15-minute walk from town. The playing field out front and the surrounding trees create a green-campus feel which our staff and students find attractive.

The campus has been transformed over recent years, both in terms of buildings and biodiversity. We have a Sports and Fitness Centre, state of the art science laboratories and a ‘Digital Skills Centre’. The new T-level Building has specialist rooms for Health Science, Education, Early Years and Engineering, our new Art Loft and recently opened Avebury Building houses our specialist pastoral and careers teams. Recently the College extended the Animal Centre with a newly built Outdoor Exotics Centre.

A second transformation of our campus is about encouraging biodiversity and making more of our outdoor space. We have been developing our ‘green campus plans’ for many years. We have undertaken a great deal of planting of trees, native hedging, bulbs and wildflowers while a small group of staff and students have converted one part of our site to a ‘forest school area’ with ponds and wildlife areas. They currently work on various projects on site to improve habitats including building a roundhouse. Our ambitions include developing more interesting outside spaces both between the buildings and around the green parts of our campus. We hope it is somewhere you will also enjoy.

IT infrastructure is excellent and classrooms and study areas well served with data connections and Wi-Fi. Teaching rooms are equipped with the latest technology with laptops also available in most areas. Increasingly lecturers provide additional support to students via courses set up on our VLE.

Cirencester College is a specialist Sixth Form College Cirencester College based at the heart of the South Cotswolds’ town of Cirencester, Gloucestershire. One of only three designated specialist Sixth Form Colleges in the South West.

The College provides a bridge between school and university, apprenticeships or employment. Students experience the academic challenge, pastoral support and enrichment expected at the best sixth form but with a more adult ethos, based on mutual respect, to prepare you to be a successful, independent person.

The College offers an unrivalled choice of subjects from the Upgrade Programme to Level 3 A-levels, T-levels and Vocational courses. The great choice of courses and professional apprenticeships is a major reason why so many students make us their first choice.

Cirencester College ensures that students achieve their full potential through individual student tutorials. Cirencester Sixth Form College’s reputation for excellent teaching, learning, innovation and student support produces consistently high value-added scores and achievement rates.