THE SCHOOLS RECORD The subject you do not want to lose King’s College School, Wimbledon and St Paul’s School Source publications read: 2026-09-30 “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”. 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 pleasure, or a welcome duty? Compulsory breadth can feel like an opportunity to one pupil and a constraint to another, and now and then to the same pupil a term apart, which is why the reason for wanting it matters as much as the course. 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. “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. SOURCES 1. King’s: Sixth Form https://www.kcs.org.uk/senior-school/academic-life/curriculum/sixth-form Reviewed public content response: https://www.kcs.org.uk/?method=url&path=/senior-school/academic-life/curriculum/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. Source read: 2026-09-30. Undated publication. 2. King’s: Sixth Form curriculum https://www.kcs.org.uk/media/4798/curriculum_a-level-and-ibdp.pdf Page 1: subjects, group and level restrictions, and the combination-availability footnote. Undated guide. Source read: 2026-09-30. Undated publication. 3. St Paul’s: Daily Life, ages 16–18 https://www.stpaulsschool.org.uk/about-st-pauls/13plus/daily-life-16/ Year 12 subjects and later reduction; tutor groups and Friday programme. Undated page. Source read: 2026-09-30. Undated publication. 4. St Paul’s: Extended Projects https://www.stpaulsschool.org.uk/academic/academic-13-16/subjects/extended-projects/ Individual supervision and possible project forms. Undated page. Source read: 2026-09-30. Undated publication. 5. St Paul’s: Engineering https://www.stpaulsschool.org.uk/academic/academic-13-16/subjects/engineering/ The described course is based on Edexcel Extended Project Level 3. Undated page. Source read: 2026-09-30. Undated publication. 6. King’s: 16+ Entry https://www.kcs.org.uk/admissions/senior-school/16plus Reviewed public content response: https://www.kcs.org.uk/?method=url&path=/admissions/senior-school/16plus Day provision and coeducational sixth-form entry. The dated TSR record uses the school’s public content response for this page. Source read: 2026-09-30. Undated publication. 7. St Paul’s: Boarding https://www.stpaulsschool.org.uk/admissions/boarding/ Full, weekly and flexi arrangements; flexi boarding subject to space. Undated page. Source read: 2026-09-30. Undated publication. SCOPE 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. This kept reading does not update when the publication changes. Read the essay: https://theschoolsrecord.co.uk/research/the-subject-you-do-not-want-to-lose/ Continue your school-choice research: https://theschoolsrecord.co.uk/research/choice/