Competition and Cooperation in the FE sector
12 May 2026
This research report examines how competition and fragmentation in England’s post-16 education system affect the range of subjects available to students, geographic inequalities in subject choice, and delivery efficiency.
Commissioned by the Association of Colleges (AoC), we explore whether providers in more fragmented areas — characterised by a larger number of relatively small providers — tend to offer a narrower curriculum to 16–19 learners and have weaker delivery efficiency.
Whilst post-16 education policy has tended to emphasise the benefits of a market-based model in which provider diversity and competition drive up quality, efficiency and responsiveness, our research highlights the downsides of excessive fragmentation.
It suggests that fragmentation in local post-16 education systems may weaken providers’ economies of scale, resulting in less efficient investment of resources, narrower subject choices for learners — particularly in ‘marginal’ and ‘specialist’ areas that are harder to sustain — and geographic inequalities in the range of courses that young people can access.
Our findings suggest a more coordinated approach to planning post-16 provision — sensitive to local context but explicitly concerned with system-level efficiency and sufficiency — would be beneficial.
Key Findings
- Students’ subject choices vary substantially by geography: Students’ access to marginal and specialist subjects varies substantially depending on where they live, with the provision of some subjects relatively ‘patchy’, and a substantial number of LAs exhibiting ‘cold spots’ where some subjects are not offered by any provider.
- Providers in more fragmented local post-16 markets face greater barriers to delivering efficient class sizes: Providers in more fragmented local markets tend to deliver marginal and specialist subjects less efficiently. In LA areas where providers are smaller on average, they tend to enter fewer students for exams in marginal and specialist subjects, and they are more likely to deliver these subjects to small classes.
- Fragmented markets are typically those where a relatively high proportion of learners attend school sixth forms, rather than colleges for 16-19 learners – this is central to efficiency: LA areas where providers are smaller, on average, and where the local provider market is more fragmented, tend to have a larger proportion of students that attend school sixth forms, as opposed to standalone colleges for 16-19 learners (the bulk of which are General FE Colleges, Sixth Form Colleges and 16-19 Academies and Free Schools). School sixth forms are, on average, far smaller than colleges, which has implications for the subjects they can offer and how efficiently they can deliver them.
- Across many subject areas – particularly humanities and social sciences – school sixth forms will tend to continue to offer subjects inefficiently rather than withdraw them: There are strong competitive incentives for school sixth forms to continue offering many marginal and specialist subjects – particularly in the humanities, social sciences and some languages – despite weaker efficiency, resulting in duplication of provision across many small sites.
- A proliferation of school sixth forms in an area appears to undermine nearby colleges’ economies of scale: In LA areas where a higher proportion of learners attend school sixth forms (as opposed to standalone 16-19 colleges), colleges are more likely to withdraw marginal and specialist subjects, and, where they do offer these subjects, to do so less efficiently. This indicates that a proliferation of school sixth forms within an LA area may have a system-level effect on colleges’ economies of scale, making it harder for them to sustain marginal and specialist subjects.
- Smaller school sixth forms face the largest barriers to delivering efficient class sizes and sustaining a broad subject offer, but greater consolidation does not guarantee greater subject breadth and efficiency: In LA areas where school sixth forms are smaller, these schools tend to have fewer entries and be less likely to offer A-levels in marginal or specialist subject clusters, although the same patterns are not evident for vocational qualifications.