ABSTRACT
The 1992 Further and Higher Education Act significantly changed the status of post-16 colleges by making them corporate bodies - freestanding, autonomous institutions responsible for their own affairs. Sixth form colleges belong to a different tradition. They evolved from grammar schools and most of their courses remain academic. Sixth form college staff have shown little enthusiasm for a set of externally-imposed reforms inspired largely by economic considerations. Responsibility for maintaining the colleges was transferred under the Act from county and borough councils to central government or, in practical terms, from Local Education Authorities (LEAs) to two new government-appointed further education funding councils. The corporate plans produced by the colleges are impressive documents matched only by the rhetoric of the prospectuses that articulate their mission to the public in general and prospective students in particular. The inclusion of sixth form colleges in the 1992 legislation that gave further education (FE) colleges corporate status had not been widely predicted.
