'How do you get a teenager out of bed at 05:15?'

Getting a teenager up early can be a struggle at the best of times, but to have to do it four days a week at 05:15 so they can travel a long distance to college can put significant pressure on them and on the parent-child relationship.

Corrin Wallace knows this all too well. She had to get her son Joshua up at that time to make sure he could catch the bus for the 18-mile trip from Felixstowe to Suffolk Rural College in Otley.

"He would leave the house at six o'clock and wouldn't get back until half past six in the evening. So it was really tricky for him. He was knackered. He was moody. He was disengaged at home," she said.

However, these early morning starts will now be the only option those pursuing post-16 education as Felixstowe School has paused its intake for new sixth formers.

The port and seaside town of Felixstowe is on a peninsula. The only sixth form - at Felixstowe School - is being mooted for permanent closure and a consultation is being held. The alternative for over-16s means travelling to Ipswich, Woodbridge or Otley.

All of these destinations take at least 20 minutes by car or over an hour on public transport.

Wallace, a single mother of two, believes the 12-hour days she and her son experienced when he was at Otley affected their relationship.

It meant after a year that he did not want to continue his course.

"Trying to get him up in the morning, it was a real, real, real struggle," she said.

"It gets to the point where actually I can't stand there continuously trying to wake him up because I've got another child to get to school and I have to get myself to work."

If her son missed his 06:00 bus he would miss all the connections and could not get to Otley.

"It was one of the real barriers and actually starts to affect your relationship as well," said mum.

Wallace said paying for transport was also a problem. At £700 per term on one income, she had to get support from her wider family.

The closure of the lower sixth follows a similar move at Bungay High in Suffolk last year.

Joshua Wallace, now 18 and working in Felixstowe, says his college experience was affected by having to spend so much time travelling on a bus.

"By the time I arrived, I was already exhausted, and knowing I had the same long journey ahead of me made it hard to stay focused and motivated in lessons," he said.

"Over time, the constant tiredness and stress started to affect my mental health, making me feel overwhelmed, isolated, and unmotivated."

Wallace believes that if there had been something more local, or there were better transport links, he could have "actually enjoyed learning instead of just trying to get through the day".

Level Two is a charity that works to "increase the life skills and advance the non-formal education" of young people aged seven to 25.

Megan Pilcher, a youth worker, said the lack of a sixth form in the town would have a "huge" impact.

"There are young people that are already struggling to get into school... for whatever reason. So to add in the thought that they can't go to school in Felixstowe, that they're going to have to get a bus to travel to somewhere else - that's a lot to take on," she said.

"The cost of transport is very high and I can only imagine that it's going to increase in time as well. And so taking into account the transport costs, the emotional side, confidence, access needs - it's all mounting up on young people and families."

She believes the town needs some kind of post-16 education, and not necessarily just A levels.

"A solution to supporting these young people would be a post-16 skills centre, something like that. A localised option would be really beneficial," she said.

Lucinda Cooper is a project manager for Level Two and also has two children at Felixstowe School.

Her eldest child is a couple of years from having to make a post-16 decision.

"My son was hoping to go to sixth form. It's an early decision for him, but he's quite structured in his thinking," she said.

"I think travelling into Ipswich does feel like quite a lot for him, so we will need to support him as parents; we're fortunately in a position where we can.

"That won't be the case for everybody, which concerns me."

She pointed to the latest Office for National Statistics data showing that 948,000 young people in the UK are NEETs (people aged 16-24 who are not in education, employment or training) and the sixth form intake decision could make it harder for them to take their next steps after GCSEs.

"A localised skills-based provision for young people in Felixstowe would be amazing," she said.

Earlier this week, the Labour MP for Suffolk Coastal, Jenny Riddell-Carpenter, met with the Minister for School Standards, Georgia Gould, to discuss the sixth form closure and its implications.

The minister replied in a letter after the meeting to say they had been informed the school would be holding a consultation on the closure and the department would make the final decision.

Riddell-Carpenter told the BBC she also discussed the wider issue of the lack of post-16 learning and skills in the town: "We absolutely need to make sure that Felixstowe has a really thriving education community and that kids and young people can have their education ambitions seen and heard in Felixstowe itself rather than having to leave Felixstowe."

Felixstowe School is part of the Unity Schools Partnership and a spokesperson for Unity said: "The number of students staying on into Year 12 at Felixstowe School has declined over several years and remains very low, despite the school's rising standards of achievement. The attractive and broad post-16 offering of the colleges in Ipswich is very hard to match.

"As a result, the income the school receives for its sixth form is significantly lower than the cost of running it.

"It is the right thing to do to pause recruitment into Year 12 and ensure that per-pupil funding is spent supporting the 1,100-plus students in Years 7 to 11 to make the progress they deserve.

"For the avoidance of doubt, all money saved by the decision to pause Year 12 will be spent at Felixstowe School for the benefit of its students."

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