Hundreds of secondary schools fear that their sixth forms will face closure, a survey suggests.

Up to one-third of schools said in the survey that changes in funding courses for 16- to 19-year-olds would mean the closure of their sixth form within a decade.

They fear that the UK Government's planned overhaul of the post-16 sector, due to be introduced in 2002, will make it difficult for them to compete with larger further education colleges.

Schools say they will not be able to offer a wide enough range of courses and that they will lose so many pupils to colleges that their own sixth forms will have to shut.

Changes in funding will mean in the long term that colleges will receive the same level of funding for students as schools. At present, school sixth forms have a higher level of funding.

The survey, carried out for The Times Educational Supplement, looked at the implications of the Learning and Skills Act, which will shift responsibility for sixth form funding from local authorities to "learning and skills councils".

Ending duplication

But the Department for Education has rejected such forecasts of mass closures of sixth forms, saying that funding would be assured where there was demand for a school sixth form.

The survey suggested that schools in affluent areas or in rural areas with no easy access to colleges were the most confident of retaining their sixth forms.

The re-organisation of post-16 education is intended to end the duplication of services and to create a more co-ordinated approach between schools, sixth form colleges and further education colleges.

But there have been persistent claims that any "rationalisation" would mean an expansion of further education colleges at the expense of small school sixth forms.