# Hills Road Sixth Form College

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 former students

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.
Hills Road Sixth Form College
* Alison Balsom – trumpeter signed with EMI Classics
* Anthony Browne- Member of Parliament for South Cambridgeshire 2019-2024
* Catherine Banner – author
* Cavetown – singer, songwriter, musician, and YouTuber
* Benedict Cork – singer, songwriter, musician
* Milo Edwards – comedian, writer, and podcaster
* Alice Hewkin – actress
* Tom Hunt - Member of Parliament for Ipswich 2019-2024
* Hector Janse van Rensburg – watercolour painter, also known as Shitty Watercolour
* Katie Rowley Jones – West End actress
* Tim Key – comedian and poet
* Dave Lewis – former Tesco CEO
* Nemone Metaxas – radio DJ
* Mark Pettini, Essex County cricketer (and former captain). Former member of England Under-19 team
* Martin Popplewell – journalist and TV news presenter
* Surie – Singer, representing the United Kingdom in the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest with the song "Storm"
* Ben Thapa – member of male singing quartet G4
* Tom Westley, Essex County England Test cricketer and captain of England Under-19 at the 2008 Under-19 Cricket World Cup
* Lydia White – actress and singer

## Results and reputation

In January 2014 Hills Road was named the "creme de la creme" of state schools by Tatler Magazine, and included in Tatler's list of thirty elite state school in the United Kingdom. The 2009 Alps Report placed the College third in the sixth form college performance table and in the top 1% for all institutions. According to the 2009 edition of the BBC's English school tables, the school's student have performed above average in A-Level examinations.
The college has achieved an Ofsted rating of 'Outstanding' from its first inspection in 2001.