KCS Wimbledon / St Paul’s · Choosing a sixth form
The subject you do not want to lose
Two schools, several good reasons to choose between them, and a family that may not yet agree which of those reasons matters most.
“I want to keep my options open” is a perfectly sensible thing to say about the sixth form and, as instructions to a school go, almost useless, because the same words can carry quite different wishes. A pupil may still love subjects that belong to no single future plan. A parent may be uneasy about closing off a university route before anyone knows which route it is, and someone else may just want another year before anything feels final.
King’s and St Paul’s can be compared on almost anything, and the comparison earns its keep only when you know which wish it serves. So it helps to name the thing you would be sorry to lose, which is usually a subject, sometimes the room to go further in one and now and then the shape of the week around it. A school can tell you whether that will survive its timetable, and can do very little with “options”.
What are you trying to keep?
Each reading starts from a different concern and works from the same publications, so changing your mind about what matters changes the argument and leaves the facts where they were.
If breadth is the point
Breadth is a pleasure with homework attached.
Wanting breadth needn’t mean anything more suspicious than appetite. There may be a language you would hate to lose, or a science that still surprises you, or a book that has made literature hard to give up, and none of them needs a future plan’s permission, least of all at sixteen, when plans are written in pencil.
At King’s the IB Diploma writes breadth into the rules. The school’s sixth-form page sets out six subjects, three at Higher Level and three at Standard Level, studied alongside Theory of Knowledge, an Extended Essay and CAS.1 For a pupil with several loves that is the whole attraction, since the rules then do the arguing that a hard term might otherwise start.
The attraction comes with a bill, and the subject you kept for love tends to present it just when your favourite turns difficult, then again in the dull stretches. Learning about something and being assessed in it are separate commitments, of course, and the diploma, being a qualification, asks for the second.
One sentence, finished honestly and preferably out loud, will tell you which kind of breadth you mean: “Even when the rest of my course becomes demanding, I would be sorry to stop studying …” Whatever goes in the gap is the centre of the comparison. The duller question, which the curriculum guide sensibly gives a footnote of its own, is whether the exact IB subjects, levels and combination will work for the intended year.2
A reason to think again
A serious interest can survive without a syllabus, and a pupil who chooses A levels might keep a language, a science or an art going in some other form, out of the examiners’ reach. King’s publishes an A-level route too, so the choice runs inside one school as well as between two.
If breadth appeals mainly as a way of not deciding, which happens in the best-regulated families, the diploma may simply postpone the decision and add work in the meantime. If it’s the subjects themselves you want, the same obligation looks much more like a gift.
A question whose answer could change the reading
Can I keep the particular breadth I care about?
A broad route that loses the subject you came for is breadth in name only, so the thing to ask King’s is whether your six intended subjects, each at its Higher or Standard Level, can run as one programme in your year of entry.
A sentence to take into the conversation
“I want breadth badly enough to do its work.”
It’s a less comfortable sentence than “I want to keep my options open”, and a far more useful one, because it tells a school exactly what any answer has to preserve.
Another person in the family may well begin somewhere else, and their concern deserves a reading too. A family can agree on every fact here and still differ over what matters most, which is rather what the conversation is for.
A plain text copy, yours to keep without an account, which takes the argument against this reading with it, along with the next question and the dated source links.
If depth is the point
Room to go further, if you know where.
Narrowing your subjects can look like caution, and it can just as easily be an act of intellectual greed. You may want time, without other subjects tugging at your sleeve, to stay with a difficult problem, to read well beyond the set book, or to make something that will need several failed attempts before it works.
On paper the two A-level programmes are close cousins. At King’s, pupils take four subjects in Year 12 and continue at least three in Year 13, with a King’s Essay in Year 12.1 St Paul’s, in its account of daily life in the sixth form, describes four or five subjects in Year 12, and some pupils reduce the number at the end of that year.3
What neither count can tell you is how free you would feel. A fourth subject might be an interest happily carried on, or it might be hours you would much rather give to the other three. Only the pupil can say which, usually by working out what, exactly, they would do with greater concentration.
Independent work is where the question gets specific. St Paul’s describes an EPQ with individual academic supervision, in forms that include a dissertation, an investigation, a performance or an artefact,4 the last of which makes a sixth-former’s project sound fit for a glass case. Its Engineering course is based on an Extended Project qualification,5 which should give pause to anyone inclined to count it as an A level.
A reason to think again
Narrowing has a cost too, because the subject you drop may be the very one that would have changed how you see your favourite. Being unsure at sixteen, however often it is treated as a condition in need of a cure, can also be a perfectly accurate account of your interests.
Neither route, for that matter, promises more free time just because its subject count is lower, any more than a shorter menu promises a shorter dinner. If you would rather keep several subjects going, the IB’s required breadth at King’s is a serious alternative.
A question whose answer could change the reading
Is there room in this programme for the work I want to do?
From each school you’ll want the exact subjects, the project route you could take and the rules for reducing or changing the programme later, because a named project, however promising, won’t necessarily fit every combination.
A sentence to take into the conversation
“I want to concentrate, and I know what for.”
Once that’s said, the next conversation can be about the work itself and what each programme would ask of you, a conversation that counting subjects was never going to start.
Another person in the family may well begin somewhere else, and their concern deserves a reading too. A family can agree on every fact here and still differ over what matters most, which is rather what the conversation is for.
A plain text copy, yours to keep without an account, which takes the argument against this reading with it, along with the next question and the dated source links.
If the week decides it
However good the course, someone has to live the week.
However attractive a course looks on paper, it eventually becomes a Tuesday, with work to finish, an activity that runs late and some small difficulty that needs somebody’s attention, and the Tuesday after that is much the same. A family chooses the course, but it is the pupil who lives the Tuesdays, and the arrangements that shape them deserve at least as much thought.
King’s is a day school.6 St Paul’s publishes day, full and weekly boarding arrangements, with flexible boarding subject to space,7 and those last three words can carry a good deal of weight in a family’s plans. The difference sounds like the kind of thing one sorts out after the interesting decisions, yet for a particular family it may outweigh a long list of academic attractions the two schools share.
Travelling in as a day pupil takes time, and takes it every day, including the mornings nobody feels like it. Boarding changes where the ordinary evenings are spent, and in whose company. Neither arrangement, on its own, tells us how settled, independent or supported a particular pupil would feel, which is the thing a family most wants to know.
The useful test is to walk through an unremarkable week together and ask where the work gets done, what happens after a late finish and who is within reach when something small goes wrong. The answers should add up to a plausible version of the life the pupil hopes to lead, built from arrangements the school can actually offer.
A reason to think again
Convenience settles nothing on its own, and a pupil may quite reasonably accept a longer commute for a course or a community they badly want. An arrangement that looks easy from one side of the breakfast table can also hide a compromise that someone on the other side is quietly making.
That compromise deserves a name before practicality is given the casting vote, because what matters in the end is which demands still feel worth it, week after week, to the people who will be living with them.
A question whose answer could change the reading
Will the real week support the course we want?
The answers that matter are unglamorous ones, about the normal timetable, commitments beyond lessons, whom to contact for support and the precise day or boarding arrangement available for the intended intake. Flexible boarding at St Paul’s is subject to space, which makes it worth asking about early.
A sentence to take into the conversation
“The ordinary week decides which options are real for us.”
That belongs to the educational choice as much as any subject does, and saying so makes the next enquiry a practical one while leaving the family free to decide which compromises are worth making.
Another person in the family may well begin somewhere else, and their concern deserves a reading too. A family can agree on every fact here and still differ over what matters most, which is rather what the conversation is for.
A plain text copy, yours to keep without an account, which takes the argument against this reading with it, along with the next question and the dated source links.
What the schools publish
What stays put whichever concern comes first
These are the arrangements the two schools publish. They will bear more than one judgement, which is a polite way of saying that the choosing is still yours.
| Route | Examined study | Independent work |
|---|---|---|
| KCS Wimbledon IB Diploma1 | Six subjectsThree Higher, three Standard Levels; also Theory of Knowledge and CAS. | Extended Essay |
| KCS Wimbledon A levels1 | Four in Year 12At least three continue in Year 13. | King’s Essay in Year 12 |
| St Paul’s A-level programme3 | Four or five in Year 12Some pupils reduce the number at the end of that year. | Separately described EPQ4 and Engineering project work5Neither description shows that every pupil, or every programme, has access. |
A table like this settles none of the things a family most needs to check, such as exact combinations, levels, timetable restrictions and availability for the intended intake. An Extended Project is not the same as a full A level, whatever the course around it happens to be called.
Sources and scope of this reading
What these readings say about the schools comes from the reviewed publications behind our full KCS Wimbledon and St Paul’s research, and from nowhere else. These are published arrangements, from pages and a curriculum guide that are undated where noted. They do not confirm exact future provision, an offer or access to a particular project, still less what a pupil’s ordinary week will be like. King’s sixth form is coeducational; St Paul’s is a boys’ school. Admissions conditions and the actual cost for the intended intake are left to one side here, though no complete enquiry can leave them out.
- King’s: Sixth Form
A-level and IB structures; King’s Essay. The dated TSR record uses the school’s public content response for this page. Page itself undated.
Reviewed public content response
Source read 30 Sep 2026 · Undated publication
- King’s: Sixth Form curriculum
Page 1: subjects, group and level restrictions, and the combination-availability footnote. Undated guide.
Source read 30 Sep 2026 · Undated publication
- St Paul’s: Daily Life, ages 16–18
Year 12 subjects and later reduction; tutor groups and Friday programme. Undated page.
Source read 30 Sep 2026 · Undated publication
- St Paul’s: Extended Projects
Individual supervision and possible project forms. Undated page.
Source read 30 Sep 2026 · Undated publication
- St Paul’s: Engineering
The described course is based on Edexcel Extended Project Level 3. Undated page.
Source read 30 Sep 2026 · Undated publication
- King’s: 16+ Entry
Day provision and coeducational sixth-form entry. The dated TSR record uses the school’s public content response for this page.
Reviewed public content response
Source read 30 Sep 2026 · Undated publication
- St Paul’s: Boarding
Full, weekly and flexi arrangements; flexi boarding subject to space. Undated page.
Source read 30 Sep 2026 · Undated publication
The interpretation is ours. A kept reading holds on to these source dates and does not update when a school changes its pages, so it will go on saying what the pages said when we read them.