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School sporting scholarships/recruitment

cyclopath

George Smith (75)
Staff member
A school that does well in the HSC by selecting its students with an entrance exam does your boy much harm. He will not suddenly learn Calculus or Catulus by osmosis. His personal marks will be given to another's ATAR. The school that offers a scholarship to a prop to keep the scrum from collapsing is a nice way of saying to you that your boy can't make it at this stage. Why is this such a perennial problem?
What a lot of absolute rubbish.
 

beserker

Herbert Moran (7)
Sad but true, unless of course your boy is in 1st XV and is on track to get an ATAR of 98. Then good luck to you! But for the rest of us we know that, just as in rugby, all the resources are thrown at the top and some can trickle down. Schools should be judged on what they do for the fat part of the bell curve, for what they do for the third XV, and how they move students up. The rest is blind.
 

Inside Shoulder

Nathan Sharpe (72)
Sad but true, unless of course your boy is in 1st XV and is on track to get an ATAR of 98. Then good luck to you! But for the rest of us we know that, just as in rugby, all the resources are thrown at the top and some can trickle down. Schools should be judged on what they do for the fat part of the bell curve, for what they do for the third XV, and how they move students up. The rest is blind.

It is not clear which school you think you are referring to.
Over the course of 6 years the less academically inclined are influenced to be more academic by those they are at school with in addition to the school's performance influencing each boys result by the statistical process to which ILTW refers.
Nearly all of the boys at the school i suspect you have in mind would fail (and do fail) to make it into one of the selective high schools, what's more many of the boys on academic scholarships at the place are not in the top class.
Its rare to see a rugby import in other than the 1st XV, isn't it?
 

Brian Westlake

Arch Winning (36)
Really QH...''Regular Wooden spooners'' you say .... GPS premiers in 85, 86, 99, 2000, 2001 and 2004 plus all the recent premierships of which i loose count ... not regular wooden spooners ... but again lets never let the truth or facts get in the way of a good Scots bashing storey.....
*LOSE.
 

Brian Westlake

Arch Winning (36)
A school that does well in the HSC by selecting its students with an entrance exam does your boy much harm. He will not suddenly learn Calculus or Catulus by osmosis. His personal marks will be given to another's ATAR. The school that offers a scholarship to a prop to keep the scrum from collapsing is a nice way of saying to you that your boy can't make it at this stage. Why is this such a perennial problem?
I have reread this many times. WTF are you trying to say?
 

beserker

Herbert Moran (7)
I like but why feed the troll?

Feel free to articulate your argument, after all we're all anonymous here except for lincoln who is Dr Wright's pa. The issues are important because it shows the mind set of our schools. The action of the headmasters to pull their schools out of basketball is reprehensible and we will all suffer. In the near future it will be hard to get anyone to play rugby because the world is fixated on the ATAR. A criminal record can disappear but your academic record stays with you for life. Just ask poor old lincoln. We should be fighting together for the sake of the boys and not regurgitating false marketing floss.
 

beserker

Herbert Moran (7)
I have reread this many times. WTF are you trying to say?

Let's get to the nub of this forum - now 12 months and 12 thousand posts old: One school allegedly has a few rugby imports. The main complainants are from schools who because they are popular are now introducing academic entrance tests, or have always done so. These schools are looking fantastic as they power up the schools ladder, with a slight reduction in their rugby prowess ( put down into 3rds, didn't win a game last year etc). Because sport is so inferior to ATAR result we can even wade in and cancel basketball fixtures. But please take a moment to think through their actions. Yes, it is great that your school looks to be taking notice of academic achievement, HOWEVER it is a total fallacy that your child will achieve better by being at a school which selects academically. Your child will be in the lower streams. Well done. On the other side of the coin, it is an easy way for the school to look good. But it is just the same mistake as Scots importing a couple of players. It will not help your child.
Lastly, if you do think that your child will somehow benefit by selective entrance. then why are you wasting everyone's time bleating about a selective sports entry. Why not emulate it? Let's get rid of the hypocrisy - it's the first thing the boys pick up on. Let's put a stop to the reprehensible action of a few headmasters. Let's band together, find out what's best for the boys and full steam ahead.
 

I like to watch

David Codey (61)
Fair call HJ, but brilliant one off players like News 12 , 15 don't necessarily follow a game plan. Scots have a game plan. It's not to everyones liking because it stops one off brilliant players taking different options during the game. The Scots game plan gives a wonderful spectacle and flies in the face of all this scholarship hoohah.
I just came across this post.
What's that move called that Scots used quite a bit(I haven't seen is applied as often in any other grade than U10's)
You know the one.
Where the star player goes into 1st receiver,and tucks the ball under his arm,and has a run.
 

Quick Hands

David Wilson (68)
Because sport is so inferior to ATAR result we can even wade in and cancel basketball fixtures.
HOWEVER it is a total fallacy that your child will achieve better by being at a school which selects academically. Your child will be in the lower streams. Well done. On the other side of the coin, it is an easy way for the school to look good. But it is just the same mistake as Scots importing a couple of players. It will not help your child.
You're entitled to your view, but I'd make a couple of points.

School is actually about learning and exams and preparing boys for careers after school, in the school setting sport is secondary to this. Very few of these boys will be able to make a career from sport, most will have to get a real job like the rest of us.

Mostly students who are in an environment where high academic achievement is the norm will in fact go better. Students learn good study habits, have a positive attitude to the academic process and help each other achieve. The same is true of sport; import 10-12 elite rugby players and the other 3-5 in the team will improve and be carried with them as they are in an environment where everything is done at high intensity and achievement is an expectation. The same would be true for all sports.

For a school to "look good" academically, all the students need to perform well, it's not just taken on the few at the top, so I'd dispute your view that it's easy. In sport on the other hand, it is far easier for a school to "look good" as mostly publicity is only given to the first team of any sport. How many schools boast about winning the 14Hs or the 8th basketball?

The Headmasters have taken the only real action open to them. While the AAGPS Code of Practice sets out rules, it doesn't set out any mechanism for punishment. So if a school ignores the code and a quiet chat to the Head doesn't work then the 2 options are to either forget the whole thing and cop it or refuse to play the school which is infringing.

It's widely accepted that Newington imported most of a rugby team for their 150th anniversary and won in 2012 and 2013. No-one refused to play them so one assumes that there has been an amicable resolution to that situation. I can't recall any NC supporter on this thread denying the obvious.

From Scots we see that the school and it's supporters on this thread deny everything. We were consistently told by Scots supporters that it was all a plot to bring them down, no sporting bursaries and then their own "external review" at Scots found 61 "good sportsmen" on bursaries.

EDIT: If you go to the websites of the GPS schools you'll find that 7 out of 8 devote considerably more space to academic results than to sporting achievements. On the 8th school, you'll find that there is no mention of the 2013 HSC at all.
 

trevor cork

Stan Wickham (3)
From Scots we see that the school and it's supporters on this thread deny everything. We were consistently told by Scots supporters that it was all a plot to bring them down, no sporting bursaries and then their own "external review" at Scots found 61 "good sportsmen" on bursaries

This mention of 'good sportsmen' has confused me since it was first mentioned. You would assume that good sportsmen would be another definition of ''good all-rounders"

Then why is the school a perennial under-achiever at the AAGPS Athletics, where you would assume that all-rounders would excel??
Or is Scots' definition of 'good sportsmen' really 'good rugby players'
 

beserker

Herbert Moran (7)
It is not clear which school you think you are referring to.

Nearly all of the boys at the school i suspect you have in mind would fail (and do fail) to make it into one of the selective high schools



You have it in one. So, should all the GPS schools follow Shore and look to become selective, which school can they attend? It is not just illegal, but also immoral for a school to discriminate against those boys who have a few interests outside of being coached for the HSC.

Once they have all become selective, these schools will be doing a good job no doubt, but not with the same type of boy. For this reason the Scots rule breaking is but a parking fine compared with the moral challenge that faces Shore et al. The only light in the tunnel is that High may follow Scots and offer some entrance spots for some sporty locals.
 

beserker

Herbert Moran (7)
You're entitled to your view, but I'd make a couple of points.


EDIT: If you go to the websites of the GPS schools you'll find that 7 out of 8 devote considerably more space to academic results than to sporting achievements. On the 8th school, you'll find that there is no mention of the 2013 HSC at all.


Unfortunately all your points seem to have been sourced from the tuck shop. I only wish they were true but am probably more cynical than you. Oh, and I did check a couple of the school websites as you suggest. They only highlight the top successes. Tell you what - why don't we have a look at the average ATAR of each of the school's 1st XV. Then, on the fairly safe assumption that these students have not been selected for their academic ability, we could see what each school was able to offer an ordinary student.
 

Brian Westlake

Arch Winning (36)
a couple of years ago. @George Smith compiled.
21;1;13 014.JPG
 

Brian Westlake

Arch Winning (36)
Unfortunately all your points seem to have been sourced from the tuck shop. I only wish they were true but am probably more cynical than you. Oh, and I did check a couple of the school websites as you suggest. They only highlight the top successes. Tell you what - why don't we have a look at the average ATAR of each of the school's 1st XV. Then, on the fairly safe assumption that these students have not been selected for their academic ability, we could see what each school was able to offer an ordinary student.
As you will see above, that quite a few of these boys have since gone on to GPS, NSW, Aus Schools and Waratahs... All of em can play footy but hardly dumb as a stump.
I honestly don't know why you wish to castigate the intelligent balanced athlete. Your kid not in the top class?
 
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