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 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. What is the extra concentration for? “Fewer subjects” describes a structure, and a structure has never told anyone what to do with the room it leaves. A book to write about, a question to chase or a problem you can’t leave alone gives it a purpose. 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. “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. 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/