Staff and students at a Wallsend college have been left devastated following a shock announcement that it is closing down.
Queen Alexandra Sixth Form College has confirmed that it will permanently close due to a "decline in numbers" over the last three years. The sixth form, which is part of Tyne Coast College, said it will stop its A-level provision at the end of this academic year.
A number of jobs are at risk and Tyne Coast said it is "looking at alternative employment" for affected staff within the college, as well as seeking voluntary redundancy applications.
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Meanwhile, the 49 first-year students impacted are said to be meeting with sixth form representatives this week to discuss options for continuing their courses at other colleges and sixth forms in the region. A further 66 A-level pupils will be taking their exams this month before leaving in the summer after completing their studies at the sixth form.
A spokeswoman for Queen Alexandra Sixth Form College told ChronicleLive that staff were informed of the closure this morning (Tuesday, May 9) and an email was also sent to parents. Students were then told face-to-face at the sixth form shortly afterwards.
A spokeswoman for Tyne Coast College, of which Queen Alexandra Sixth Form College is part, said: "This is a challenging time for further education. As a business, we regularly review our curriculum.
"This review shows that our sixth form offer is no longer financially viable having seen a year-on-year decline in numbers.
“Despite trying to grow the provision with new A Level options in the 2022/23 academic year, sadly we did not see growth. With that in mind, we have made the difficult decision to cease our A Level provision at the end of this academic year.
“Eleven members of staff are at risk. We have already requested applications for voluntary redundancy across the organisation to mitigate the impact and we are looking at alternative employment within Tyne Coast for as many at-risk members of staff as is possible.
“The timing of this decision was made to allow us a meaningful consultation period with trade unions and colleagues, and to allow us to liaise closely with other providers and North Tyneside Council to ensure that the 49 AS students impacted have alternative offers from providers in place, ready for the next academic year.
“We are meeting with students and parents on a one-to-one basis to provide them with a full package of support going forward. This includes senior members of the curriculum, highly trained careers advisers and our wellbeing team.”
Tyne Coast College said that sixth form students and staff have been informed of the closure at the "earliest opportunity."
However, North Shields mum Jane Block, whose daughter studies at the sixth form, said the college knew the number of students enrolled at the start of the year and should have told everyone affected much sooner.
She said: "It's all to do with the fact that they don't have enough students for the funding, but they would have known this at the time of enrollment, so why wait an entire year until the week before the exams to tell them?"
Jane's daughter, Marina, 17, is a first-year A-level student studying law, sociology, and criminology, with ambitions to secure an apprenticeship to become a paralegal. She is due to sit her exams next week but has been left "crushed" by the news and worried about the future.
Jane said: "We have different colleges to look at but they don't do all three subjects [Marina] wanted to do, so she has to drop a course and restart another A-level at another college or pick up a random AS level.
"Some of the colleges are so far away and the reason we picked this one for her was because she has a health condition called endometriosis which doesn't allow her to travel too far because it causes pain."
Jane added: "[Marina] had everything going for her but now she doesn't know what to do and is sitting there crying. She feels absolutely lost. She feels her dreams have been crushed.
"They [Tyne Coast] have dropped this bomb a week before exams and these kids have been left in limbo."
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