Kelston Boys’ High charter school bid flips focus from rugby to academics

By Bruce Holloway and Adam Julian

THE FACTS

• A bid to turn Kelston Boys’ High into a charter school aims to focus on academics over rugby.
• Kelston excels in rugby but lags in academics, with a university entrance rate below 12.4%.
• Alwyn Poole warns sports-focused schools must ensure students thrive academically, citing disparities in outcomes.

A controversial attempt to turn Kelston Boys’ High into a charter school should also be concentrating the minds of authorities at other secondary schools which are brilliant at First XV rugby but not so good at the academic stuff.

At a time when the re-emergence of charter schools was expected to lead to entities focusing on specialisation in things such as sport – witness the proposed New Zealand Performance Academy Aotearoa charter school for football and rugby in Wellington – the move on Kelston by the Bangerz Education and Wellbeing Trust appears to be an initiative moving in the opposite direction.

It is seemingly a bid to focus less on sport, and more on academia, making it an approach few had seen coming and almost a journey through the looking glass.

Kelston have won five national First XV titles, 14 Auckland 1A titles and last year won the World Schools Rugby Festival title in Abu Dhabi, making them one of New Zealand’s best exponents of First XV rugby.

But on the academic front, data from 2021-23 shows Kelston never got above 12.4% success as a university entrance percentage for their leavers.

Indeed, dating back to 2018, the best annual percentage they could manage was 21.6% (2018), but even that was well adrift of the mean national average (37.8%) for the six-year time frame.

Overall, Kelston lagged the national mean average by 27.4%, making them one of the worst metropolitan school performers under this metric.

In short, academic success has been inversely proportional to rugby success at Kelston and this has now left them vulnerable to a surprise charter school bid.

Alwyn Poole, an education consultant and former Tauranga Boys’ College repeat Moascar Cup-winning First XV rugby coach who collates annualised educational data, argued any schools running a sports academy or having a heavy focus on sport needed to ensure that all pupils involved in such programmes “absolutely thrive academically”.

Poole said a significant number of New Zealand schools offer “sports academies” these days, with some covering a range of sports (Westlake Boys’ High School) while others, such as national First XV champions Rotorua Boys High, focus on rugby.

“Rugby league great Paul Whatueira often says that NRL stands for ‘Not Real Long’,” Poole said. “The implication is that students need to plan and achieve for a full future – not one that is often over before it really started.

“The worst example of sporting overreach in New Zealand is the Super 8 sports schools. Collectively these schools educate half of the Māori boys in single-sex schools in New Zealand.”

But Hamilton Boys’ High School was the only Super 8 school to feature above the national mean average in University Entrance data from 2018-23.

“The academic outcomes, retention until 17 years old, progression to tertiary study are a very long way below a school like Westlake Boys’ High – and there is no excuse.”

Poole said he fully understood the joy of sporting achievement in a team environment and the esteem it brings to a school.

“But I have also observed the absolutely disproportionate response of schools towards expected performance of their students for the reputation of the school.”

He cited Rotorua Boys’ High, which runs a rugby academy and impressed in winning the National Top Four competition this year, as another example where academic results stood in stark contrast to sporting results.

“In 2024, the percentage of their leavers with University Entrance was 18%. Westlake Boys were fourth in the Top Four and their UE for leavers was 72%. It is clear what the best results combination of those two schools is.”

Meanwhile, Poole, who sees the potential for some charter schools to improve student outcomes, warned that New Zealand Performance Academy Aotearoa, which is backed by Wellington Phoenix, needed to be aware that the law governing such entities does not allow them to choose students based on sporting, or any other, ability.

“They need to genuinely show their academic credentials and reassure people that children will not be short changed in life – for the good of a sporting organisation.

“That happens in many schools and it is unacceptable.”