In State schools, and many small private schools, the sport/physical education component of the curriculum is timetabled to occur mid-week, which frees up the weekend for the kids. Unlike New Zealand, there is no tradition of State Schools and small private schools participating in Saturday sporting competitions. Most of the mid week sport/physical education periods in these schools are not formal inter-school sporting games, but are more likely to be intra-school informal minor games or exercise related activities.
In a small number of certain (often referred to as Elite) private schools in NSW and Qld, they allocate sport for Saturday and in doing so free up timetable space mid week for other lessons. Those schools also run aggressive summer and winter sports seasons with not much time for "non-traditional" 1st XV rugby matches.
Looking between the lines of the wikipedia article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_First_XV_Championship_(New_Zealand) on NZ school rugby, their approach is that they play their regular district inter-school games on weekends, and the Big Rugby Schools seem to somehow schedule the "Traditionals" (probably the equivalent to the AAGPS, Qld GPS, and CAS games) in around their graded local school competitions games.
The Sporting calendar is so entrenched in the AAGPS, CAS, ISA, Qld GPS, and QLD QIC culture and psyche that it is a major point of difference of their "brand" that they are not going to change a fundamental component of their package to suit the development needs of the peak body of one of their sports offerings. While 1st XV performance is a major component in defining the school, their educative philosophy also places value in participating in team sports for the 13H's, 15D's and 7th XV, with the vast majority of the latter of little interest to the ARU Clipboards.
The State Schools and small private schools are never going to move to compulsory Saturday Sport, or even a model where there is only 1 rugby team per year group playing under the school banner on a weekend. Junior Village Clubs have filled this vacuum but are unable to effectively integrate into a combined schools/clubs competition in Sydney and Brisbane by sheer weight of numbers. Schools like Oakhill, St Pats, Waverley and Cranbrook will have about 20 rugby teams each from U13-U18, with Joeys, Kings and Shore having up to double that number.
When ARU are taxing the grass roots to prop up the game, it's patently obvious that very little will be done to grow the game in new areas. Operating on the smell of an oily rag against a rumoured $25m AFL junior development budget (Sydney Metro only) and the rumoured $12m that NRL and NRL Clubs tip into junior loig (Sydney only) the end result should not surprise.
If the State Schools and small private schools are not interested and most Junior Village Clubs struggle to put one team together at U15 and above, and the ARU have no money left, we should be very thankful that AAGPS, CAS, ISA, Qld GPS and AIC run rugby games to keep our game alive.
Junior Gold Cup helps.
