The Sixth Form at TDMS is a vibrant, friendly and purposeful place to be a student. We regard it as the pinnacle of the school and one of our main goals is that all of our high school students aspire to become part of our Sixth Form family.

The Sixth Form has grown rapidly over the last two years. This is a testament to the quality of the relationships between staff and students as well as the diversity and challenge of our curriculum; it is a natural consequence of the rapid improvement of our results at Key Stage 4 and a recognition that TDMS provides a high quality, inclusive education that promises to unlock the potential of every child.

Outcomes in the Sixth Form have also improved significantly over the last two years. Our average grade per entry is now a C+, in line with county and national averages. Approximately 60% of our students move on to university after Sixth Form, including Russell Group institutions, or else secure apprenticeships.

Our current Sixth Form team draws upon a wealth of Sixth Form experience which enables us to maintain high standards, to have a clear vision for the future development of the Sixth Form and also to be clearly grounded in the curriculum.

For a small but expanding Sixth Form, our curriculum offer is very broad. We are able to provide a wide range of traditional facilitating subjects, including a full suite of Science and Humanities A-levels. We also offer popular vocational courses in Sport, Health & Social Care and Travel & Tourism. In the last few years we have successfully introduced new subjects such as Criminology and Film Studies, showing our ongoing commitment to offer an engaging and innovative range of subjects not usually offered in school based Sixth Forms. For more information about our courses, please read our options booklet here.

There is no doubt that A-level, Level 3 BTEC and vocational courses are a big step up from GCSE. We recognise that and have put structures in place to help our students to bridge the gap. We make extensive use of MS Teams to post online resources and activities.  We are able to offer financial support to those students most in need in order to help them to buy the textbooks that they need to access the highest grades. Our vision is for a technology-rich culture that engages our students through blended learning, excellent classroom teaching supported by high quality online resources. We encourage all students to have a laptop to bring to school. But where this isn’t possible, we will loan out Chromebooks and we also have a dedicated ICT suite for Sixth Form use only.

If you are interested in finding out more about our courses and our philosophy, please read the additional documents that are hosted on this page.