How does Kingsdale Foudation School works in terms of sports?

[NESV]

Hi everyone, l saw so many messages related this school and found the answers very helpful but still have some doubts.

I never knew the school and so far l can see my son studying there but l just wonder how they work in terms of sports. For example if a pupil chose Football for example does the school give "professional" training with coaches? Do they play in "a" particular team? The kids have good opportunities in and outside the school? They get to compete internationally?

I just wanted an idea if anyone good help.
Thanks

Masses of sports clubs that run after school - everything from football, to archery, fencing, dance, horse-riding, swimming and so on.

Sports scholarships are one of the ways of getting a place at the school and I assume the sports scholars will get specialised training in the same way that the music scholars do (my DC is a music scholar who dislikes sport).

Lots of different teams for all levels who play matches against other schools across the country. If you look at the school newsletters online there are generally details.

There are students currently at the school playing for the some of the big division football teams, and former students were gold medal winners at the Olympics.

Worth going for a tour and asking all the questions you like.

We've only just started in Y7, so newish to it.

Our son got a Gifted and Talented for Sports, which now in the School gets the same oppurtunity as full sports scholars as far as I can tell.

You can apply to try for any team, regardless of whether you got or applied for the Sports Scholorship.

If you make the football teams, you get seperate training with just the A&B team squads outside of school hours. If you don't make the squads, they have a lunchtime football session you can join, where in theory you could be moved up to the A or B team squads. As we speak, the A team has been selected, but not the B team. You can search for the fixtures etc online to get an idea of how many games per month, when they are etc. I'm unsure how much coaching they receive vs just playing matches. The standard is high, and there are some Academy players in the teams (I believe there is a cap of 3-4 Academy players per team for some league matches).

The scholars sports session is at present effectively one 30ish minute session once a week (it's over lunch, they need to get changed and eat also etc), with an option of 2 sports to do which I assume will change each term / half-term. They are also meant to have periodic sessions with outside speakers or going somewhere etc but we've not heard anything about that so far (it's early days).

There are lots of other possible sports clubs (again you can look at the timetable online to get an idea). You can join most of them, though swimming, archery, cycling and horse riding are done on a rota as small numbers per session and lots of kids want to do them).

There are a lot of non-sports clubs also.

Many clubs are over lunchtime, and some after. A few like off-site ones swimming, cycling and horse riding are during school hours and kids need to make up the missed study at home if they choose those ones (I think they miss 2-3 classes).

Hope that helps. Keep in mind it's a big intake (around 460 this year I think) so it's quite hard to get into some of the teams, I think there were 130 kids or so trying for the footall teams (boys).

Unless your child is football focussed, I wouldn't be too excited about sport at the school. Football gets the majority of the attention. Most of the other clubs are for fun/ to try out a new sport- rather than playing to a higher standard / more competitive teams / matches- eg swimming was mentioned above- but there is no swim team per se and the school doesnt enter into comps. Sometimes a team can't be fielded (yup even with over 400 intake...). You can check out fixtures on their website- but bear in mind that not all of these actually take place in some of the sports...