"Putting it into perspective"
A review of Hills Road Sixth Form College by Alex Obradovic - Sunday 21st of November 2004
One of the negative reviews mentioned that Hills Road is not the place to go for a confidence boost. I would like to congratulate this person in being astute enough to point out that Sixth Form is not about massaging one's ego. Hills Road is about knowing what you want to achieve, and then having the means to achieve it. The college is targeted by many because it tells people to go elsewhere if they do not want to achieve an A grade. This is a perfectly reasonable request because the college has a mind-set geared towards success. I would like to suggest that the "A-level factory" idea is in many ways accurate in that it systematically gives every student the possibility to get the top grades. If the student wants to go on to a University such as Cambridge or Oxford they are going to want to maximise their opportunities and "jump through hoops" to get there. Hills Road is a vehicle to success, be it academic or financial.
If, for some reason, you have found that your social life has been somewhat lacking in the time you spent at Hills Road, I would suggest that you look to yourself for the reason for this rather than point the finger at the college. If we look at the world of work in which people have trouble socialising we do not blame the firm for not babysitting employees into being friends. This is because they expect a maturity level where they only need to provide the means for friendship, and not actually set friendships up. Hills Road has a similar situation by which it allows you literally hundreds of opportunities to make friends, but does not force you to do so. If you have friends elsewhere, and regret not having gone to Sixth form with your friends, I would suggest that you take a look at your reasons for staying in education and decide who makes the decisions in your life.
To summarise my view of Hills Road, I would like to say that it is an excellent working atmosphere. The teachers, students and other staff are all serious and well educated as well as very supportive of the students. There is no pretentious "use my first name" rule as Long Road students experience. This is because Hills Road doesn't need to advertise itself as 'cool'. It is the very definition of cool; it does what IT wants to do, and it does it the best.
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