Hills Road Sixth Form College (commonly referred to as HRSFC, Hills Road or just Hills) is a public sector co-educational sixth form college in Cambridge, England, providing full-time A-level courses for approximately 2400 sixth form students from the surrounding area and a variety of courses to around 4,000 part-time students of all ages in the adult education programme, held as daytime and evening classes.
History
Hills Road Sixth Form College was established on 15 September 1974 on the site of the former Cambridgeshire High School for Boys, when education in Cambridgeshire was reorganised on a comprehensive basis, and grammar schools and secondary moderns were replaced by a system of (mainly) 11-16 comprehensive schools and sixth form colleges.
Since then, the college has expanded from its original single building, with the addition of the Sports and Tennis Centre in 1995; the Colin Greenhalgh building, which houses subjects such as English, modern languages and history; the Rob Wilkinson building housing the physics, chemistry and computer science departments was developed in 2004; in 2005 the Margaret Ingram Guidance Centre provided specialist tutorial accommodation; the Linda Sinclair building, opened in 2016, houses the mathematics and PE departments. The Study Centre, opened in 2023, provides study areas and a rooftop space for staff. Although the college previously had ambitious plans for a major redesign between 2010 and 2013, the economic crisis reduced the scope of the plans: in 2010 the college administrative areas were redesigned, more classrooms added in the physical sciences, psychology and art departments, the staffroom enlarged and relocated, the library partially refurbished, an extra resource area built to compensate for the space used to build new classrooms and the student social area rebuilt.
In the early 1990s responsibility for further education was removed from local authorities (as part of reforms aimed at reducing the level of the council tax), and Hills Road like other colleges moved to direct funding from central government.
Notable Alumni
Cambridgeshire High School For Boys
Martin Amis - novelist and son of Sir Kingsley Amis, records in his autobiography "Experience" that he attended the school while his father Kingsley Amis and his mother Hilary were living off Madingley Road, where he was described by one headmaster as “unusually unpromising”. Syd Barrett and Roger Waters of the rock band Pink Floyd; there is a suggestion that the song Another Brick in the Wall Part II, written by Waters, which includes the lyrics "we don't need no education", bears reference to Waters' miserable stint endured whilst at the County High School for Boys. Sir John Bradfield - Founder of Cambridge Science Park, the first Science Park in Europe. Bob Klose - an early member of Pink Floyd Storm Thorgerson - co-founder of the Hipgnosis partnership, who designed record covers for artists including Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Genesis and Muse
Charles Benstead, cricketer and Royal Navy officer
Peter Fluck, artist and sculptor, co-creator of the satirical TV show Spitting Image Sir Clive Granger, economist, won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2003 Prof Freddy Marshall, marine biologist, and Professor of Zoology from 1972–7 at Queen Mary, University of London David Parker, a Western Australian politician who served as Deputy Premier from 1988 until 1990. Sidney Peters, Liberal MP from 1929 to 1945 for Huntingdonshire Sir Hayden Phillips (former Permanent Secretary, Department for National Heritage/Department for Culture, Media and Sport, Lord Chancellor's Department/Department for Constitutional Affairs) Sir David Robinson William T. Stearn, botanist Sir Kevin Tebbit (former Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Defence) Mark Tout, the British bobsleigher, was a member of the team which finished fifth at the Winter Olympics of 1994. In the team was second in the World Bobsleigh Championships. He subsequently made regular appearances as a team member on A Question of Sport. William (Bill) Tutte, mathematical genius responsible for breaking the Tunny Code (the Lorenz Code), at Bletchley Park in 1941. Tunny (also known as Fish) was an extensively-used German Second World War cypher more complex than the Enigma code, used by Hitler personally. Tutte went to Cambridgeshire High School on a scholarship in 1928, aged 11, and went on to Trinity College, Cambridge in 1935. After the war he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.