ABSTRACT
Keith Joseph had been instrumental in starting an organization known as the Centre for Policy Studies which in June, 1981 produced a document entitled Crisis in the Sixth Form. When Joseph replaced Mark Carlisle as Secretary of State, he inherited the responsibility of pronouncing on the reorganization schemes which had been put forward. His decision would show whether the point had been reached when the contest between alternative ideologies of sixth form education had become a political one which divided the major parties. King places the sixth form college somewhere in the middle. By 1980, about 60,000 students were enrolled in colleges, over 12,000 of them in tertiary establishments which combined sixth form and further education curricula. Manchester's immediate response to the rejection was to amend their plan to allow schools actually named by the Secretary of State - three in number - to keep their sixth forms.
