UK school - representative sport

[teddyflyer]

We are considering a move to the UK. Our sons are both competitive at a number of sports. They will likely attend, what I understand are considered, elite private schools in Surrey.

We would like to better understand the pathways from school sport to county, or further level competition/representation.

Appreciate any insights on the typical process for progression or any information we can access that would provide more detail,

Thanks

The pathway is more typically via a club (rather than school) via selection trials/assessment camps onto training pathways.

Which sports are you interested in?

Depends on the sport, some school coaches will have contacts within county/national schemes but agree majority are also playing for local clubs and enter the county programmes from those,

We are primarily moving for football - but understand that will be through academies outside school.
Was more interested in typical progression for swimming, athletics and cross country from school to county, and beyond. For example, being selected by the school to run in county cross country, and potentially beyond.
We are based in Australia and it’s a key part of our school experience for high performers to be selected at school to then move onto area/county equivalents.
Focused mainly on 10 - 12 age group.
Thanks

That tends to happen by progression through club system. Schools like Millfield are the exception. Schools may claim credit for county and national participants but they are not usually the main contributor to success. Check what commitment to first team representation they expect too, as it may clash with external matches.

Echo the others - swimming is not via schools in the Uk. It's via clubs. Private schools with pools will of course offer training, but there are only a handful of national level schools competitions per year. And they're not representative of actually the best swimmers in the country. So you get ESSA champs but if your school doesn't push swimming, then the best swimmers may not even attend. Or IAPS which is private schools only, so only 8% of the country will be competing.
We only have a few sports schools - millfield and Kelly college in south west.
Can I just say as my own little rant from someone who runs a swim school, coaches club and competes internationally masters - please please please don't open any conversation with words similar to 'im Australian so obviously we're much better at swimming than you.' Because believe me, that route doesn't result in superior service to your children. And isn't true anyway. Yes, it happens often!

In football it is the school that nominates a couple of students to try out for county football. But only if the school participates as it isn’t mandatory.

My son played county before academy and the level for football is low. No Academy kids go as they are too focused and committed to Academy.

Academy football is the highest level. There are different academy categories. Category 1 is premier league (official) but doesn’t follow all of the premier league clubs. So yes there is Chelsea, Arsenal etc. but non premier league first teams have premier league academies and play those teams officially - Moddlesboriugh. Norwich and Reading as examples. Brentford are premier league but are category 4 for example.

Trials at Academy are through being scouted. Some clubs have open trails but this almost never gets you a trial and is a money maker for the Academy as they can if you are good out you into a development programme. If you are paying for training it isn’t an Academy. As football is the most played sport in the UK standards are exceptionally high. Your kid has to be better than everyone they would play with in JPL in their age group and possibly above. I say this factually because I have seen exceptionally talented kids not get through trials. Exceptionally talented. And then you can be dropped at any time - you have regular reviews and expectations are very high. It isn’t for everyone.

My advice would be to contact JPL (junior premier league) teams and start there. There is a very large jump from JPL to Academy and sometimes scouts go. Sometimes. Generally scounts never go to grassroots and it’s a bit of a myth you will be scouted that way. Good luck.

For cross country again the schook has regional meets. Kids who perform best there go to county and beyond. This is the state school system though and from my experience around where I live private schools don’t have the same pathway and are more limited as the numbers are smaller.

For cross country, there is in my experience a local to county to national progression via performance (initially) in local inter-school competitions between multiple schools (both state and private).

However, the children who progress through the levels will typically get their training via external clubs, though my experience is of children in the state sector so there may be some private schools that supplement/ replace that with in-house training.

Athletics and swimming is typically through clubs. Again, in my experience in both of these it starts with paid-for lessons / sessions and your child is gradually funnelled into club squads within the same organisation. In football lower leagues, scouting / trials by professional club academies in local weekend clubs or holiday week schemes, who then offer free places in academy training, is more the norm. Some larger / higher profile clubs have an intermediate layer of ‘somewhat selective’ regular sessions in various towns from whom the ‘selected few’ with contracts are drawn to a central hub.

The class structures of different sports are interesting. Many elite private schools don’t have football as a serious school sport, and permission for the many hours of academy training and matches may be hard to get.

Sorry, cross posted with PP.

Totally agree that football progression is club academy, club, then national
if good enough. Whereas cross country and athletics do have a county / regional level youth structure, underpinned by clubs,, probably because it remains amateur until the very highest levels.

Be aware that private school days are typically much longer than state schools, and sports clubs might time their sessions more in line with State schools timings. In addition if in school teams they will usually be expected to attend matches on Saturday which might clash with team/county matches/ practice. Finally double check your prestige private school actually prioritises football - most will at best have one rugby term and one football term

To qualify for county, regional's, national and British competitions as a swimmer you need to be swimming with a registered club and a member of governing body for the country - you'd be swimming england.

Qualification is done by qualifying times. Various counties have either consideration times only or some have auto times and consideration times. S east region has both.

National and British are done via rankings where you need to compete at a level 1 competition (long course) in the qualifying window. You'd probably be looking at Guildford swimming club.

But realistically if your child is competing at a high level in swimming they won't be joining football academies too and will be ,omitted to how much time they have to train athletics and running too.

They will need to decide.

If school level and school meets then athletics and swimming have regional and national schools competitions which a lot of private schools will enter if they have the right number of competitors.

There’s a really informative group on MN for mums of swimmers - i read the threads sometimes and I’m thankful my kids aren’t club swimmers! The commitment to early morning swims is phenomenal, and I’m awe of how well the parents mobilise to make it all happen. You could get really specific info there if you ask a question there about club qualifying times and how it all works.

I also know a mum who travels 90mins to get her son to his Academy training. Good club academies draw from a large geographical pool so if your son is really that good, you may want to be prepared to travel. It’s not easy, but wow what an opportunity for your kids.

hope it all works out for you and the kids.

If you’re moving for academy football part of the deal might be that you don’t play any other sport. I can’t imagine they will be happy if you sprain your ankle doing cross country…

Many Academies also forbid playing for school or ‘recreational’ club football teams for risk of injury. Schools that advertise their sports prowess can be a little sticky if their premier footballers are not only leaving school early 2-3x per week for travel to training, but are also unable to represent the school in football or any other sport…..

In my area there are English schools cross country events which are at area/county/region/national level and events are entered via schools. Then there are also county athletics associations that have links through local running and athletics clubs and are normally country/region/national. You can apply for the county races if you are registered with English athletics and normally apply yourself as a club member. You can do both at the same time as long as the dates don't clash

Athletics is a mixture of schools and clubs. If they’re serious then join an athletics club. But they can’t do it all. How do you manage when fixtures clash, let alone regular training?

On athletics and cross country, I’d say that joining an athletics club is the better way to access higher level competition, and to be talent spotted for development programmes.

Also coaches who I know do not like early specialisation in any particular athletics discipline and also prefer their juniors to engage in other sports too until well Into their teens (sounds like you have all-rounders who will do that anyway!)

There are inter-school competitions in both state and private sector, so worth asking what events the school enters teams for. That’ll give you some idea of how well the sport is supported in the school - in some athletics is very much second fiddle to cricket in the summer, and cross country an optional add-on in winter (eg weekly early morning club)

On football, different clubs have differing levels of attention to grassroots talent spotting - some clubs (often the richer ones) put resources in to community liaison and do go to watch. Others perhaps only go occasionally (eg club I knew used to be visited by a talent spotter, but that was because the senior club manager was an ex-premier league player who kept in touch with his club and so it was a mates arrangement).

Be aware that if on an elite programme, it can rapidly dig in to availability for school extra-curricular coaching and for school fixtures, which can require parental diplomatic skills to deconflict.

I don’t know anything about swimming, other than that the more serious swimmers that me DC knew needed to get to school v early 2 or 3 days a week for school coaching sessions before the school day started. I don’t know if they also had evening as members of a club

I'd also contact the schools your interested in and ask them about sports and access to county or national competitions. They may already have children taking part competitively.

It's a long time since my school days and I think it's changed eg boys signing to train with a club became ineligible for amateur sports.

Hope you find suitable placement.

The other thing is that, when you say that you’re moving primarily for football, I’m assuming (hoping?) that you’re not moving your family half way round the planet on
the off chance that your child gets picked up by an academy team? He’s got an academy place?
You need to seek their advice about other sports options.

also, you might not have a choice of school. Some academies like all their players to go to the same school as it’s easier for them to co-ordinate, especially at a certain age. They might keep them in their existing schools, but if they’ve scouted them from out of area they will funnel them towards a school.

Thank you for all your replies. Very insightful if not a little disappointing. Around 10 years in Australia you would be able to go onto swimming, cross country and athletics via school without that much early specialisation. It’s just a quite inclusive and fun pathway (although they end up missing quite a few school days for the events).

The private school issue is also one I am aware of in terms on long days and clashes with external training. Not sure how to deal with that as we are pretty committed to private school. I will find out more from the schools we are planning to attend.

We are moving partly for the experience (and because we can), with the aim of football being a part of that. My husband was in a top premier league academy and his brother in the first youth team for a premier league club. We will be training with a number of premier league academies this year over a few weeks and then next year playing against most of the premier league academies with our Australian club. We are intending to use that as a way we hope to secure an academy spot - along with our contacts. Will look further at JPL also,

Thanks all

One more thing - am open to any suggestions as to where I could see “county” level times for races for swimming, cross country and athletics. Am keen to understand how competitive the children will be based on their current performance. Thanks

This might be a place to start for county athletics, if you can find a crib to decipher the classes / age groups:

esaa.org.uk/county-track-field-results-2024-2/

You can google that info op. I just googled for you south east regional swimming results - where Surrey is - www.southeastswimming.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/2024-04-21-Session-3.pdf - on this link a 10 yr old boy (age is as at 31/dec so they are in 11 category if they turn 11 in the year) would need to do 30 seconds for 50m fly to win.

I believe that with the football academies there is an effective ‘catchment’ for younger children (60 mins travel time?) so make sure that you are seeing / being seen by only ones local to your proposed location.

Lots of details online s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/gc-media-assets.gc.eflservices.co.uk/0dc34f00-6156-11ef-9b47-e7819675458d.pdf

Here is rankings for swimming in Britain.

www.swimmingresults.org

You can go to rankings and select last 12 months.

Then select long or short course, age as of end of year, stroke and distance, sex and at the bottom select county, region or national.

Here's the consideration rimes for Surrey county champs in feb 2025.

surreyswimming.org/web/wp-content/uploads/Qualifying-and-Consideration-Times-2025-v2.pdf