Ellesmere College Don’t Tell The Truth On Sports Scholarships

Aylesbury_Duck

Why are you seeking advice here if you have engaged solicitors and they've told you you have a very strong case?

Just let them deal with it. I suspect they'd also advise you not to go around accusing the business of being fake or fraudulent on the world wide web, especially when you've given enough personal information to make it pretty obvious who you are.  You might find you're not the only party to engage solicitors. 

davidmcn

EllesmereCollege_fake said:

Manxman_in_exile said:

EllesmereCollege_fake said:

Manxman_in_exile said:

Why on earth would any reasonable parent sell their house at a loss of £60k and move 120 miles so that their ten year-old son could attend Ellesmere College golf academy?  How many successful golf pros has this "academy" produced?

The kid'll probably grow up hating golf!

Are the solicitors no-win no-fee?  

EDIT: out of curiosity, how did you know the bus driver was unqualified to teach sport?  How did you know he was a bus driver?

A couple of things here

1 - The school promised that they would provide coaches to him to assist him with his own golf program. The golf program was put together by professional PGA coaches, and paid for externally. 

2 - If you have a child playing elite sport you will appreciate the time commitment this requires, therefore the alleged fraud isn’t the marketing material on the website. It’s because they promised to provide qualified staff to support his own programme that was designed by his own coaches and they didn’t do this.

the reason for moving was because travelling your child 30/40 miles every day to golf takes it strain on every day living, so having a place where my son could go to school and access all his golf during the day was the attraction.

anyway, thanks for the advice - we will let our solicitors deal with it and the matter has also been reported to trading standards based on the false representations they made.

thanks for the feedback Diggingdude - we are looking at Lakeland’s, it’s not about not being able to pay the school fees, it’s more to do with not getting what we were promised.

anyway thanks again for the feedback, will let the solicitors and trading standards sort this mess out for us 

I don't wish to appear critical, but your son is only ten years old.  Isn't that a bit early for him (or perhaps for you) to decide that he's going to devote so much of his time and pre-teenage development to playing golf?  And it sounds as if he's not going to be playing golf - he'll be following a coaching programme - which, bizarrely, has been drawn up by PGA coaches not employed at the "academy" that will be providing the programme(!).

At the age of ten, how can your son (or you for that matter) know that this is the best way for him to spend his extra-curricula time?  I can imagine that far more budding professionals have been put off "elite" sport for ever by being immersed in it so completely at such an early age than have ever made a success of it, or even enjoyed it.  I'm a golf devotee and your son might be the next best thing since Tiger Woods*, but it's no way for a ten year old to spend their time.

Sorry - I have ended up sounding critical and judgmental, but it doesn't sound right to me for a ten year old.

*  And I don't think Earl Woods did his son any favours either.

when you’ve been told one thing, and you were told this to get you to part with your money and we relied on those representations and then moved house - was this fraud?

It might be, but that isn't in itself all that is required to constitute fraud. And I'm not sure that defining it as "fraud" helps you. Your case is surely just that you didn't get the services you expected to - whether that was deliberate or not doesn't seem relevant.

EllesmereCollege_fake

Aylesbury_Duck said:

Why are you seeking advice here if you have engaged solicitors and they've told you you have a very strong case?

Just let them deal with it. I suspect they'd also advise you not to go around accusing the business of being fake or fraudulent on the world wide web, especially when you've given enough personal information to make it pretty obvious who you are.  You might find you're not the only party to engage solicitors. 

Thanks for your concern, however having spoken to Trading Standards last week it was in fact them that suggested they could have made a Fraudulent Representation and given how they lied to us, and it was our solicitor  who advised us to contact them.

so as you suggest I’ll stick to their advice  

J_B

Aylesbury_Duck said:

Why are you seeking advice here if you have engaged solicitors and they've told you you have a very strong case?

Just let them deal with it. I suspect they'd also advise you not to go around accusing the business of being fake or fraudulent on the world wide web, especially when you've given enough personal information to make it pretty obvious who you are.  You might find you're not the only party to engage solicitors. 

And maybe 'washing your dirty linen in public' may possibly (?) prejudice your case perhaps?

J_B

diggingdude said:

As someone who went to a far superior private school close by Ellesmere college .............

Hmm, I went to one of those ... i wonder which one you went to? ;-)

Manxman_in_exile

OP - I really am genuinely curious to know the answer to this because it's something that interests me - but feel free to ignore me if you wish as I am straying off topic a bit.

If your son is spending eight hours a week playing cricket (which is presumably not his primary sport) how much time is he meant to be spending playing golf (or more likely doing golf drills) if the PGA pro written programme is adhered to?  I'm assuming more time than cricket so perhaps ten or twelve hours per week in addition to the eight hours cricket?

JamoLew

Ignoring all the comments and issues raised -- to address the "age thing"
I am pretty much sure that the vast majority of the most famous names in sport today were doing something very similar at the same ages as the OPs child

Manxman_in_exile

JamoLew said:

Ignoring all the comments and issues raised -- to address the "age thing"
I am pretty much sure that the vast majority of the most famous names in sport today were doing something very similar at the same ages as the OPs child

I'm pretty certain you are correct.  But would you actually want to be one of those famous names?  I've loved all forms of sport throughout my life and have participated in many of them at some relatively low level, but I certainly would not want to be one of those famous names.  Apart from the money(!) it seems like rather an empty and pointless life to me.

And that assumes you are successful (however you're going to measure that).  What if you're simply not good enough to be in the top 1% that become famous names, and you don't make the grade?  Were all those hours spent between the ages of ten and sixteen wasted?  It reminds me of some of those documentaries from the 80s and 90s covering tennis acadamies like Nick Boltieri's in Florida.  Yes he produced a lot of champions, but most students didn't have any real success and I'm not sure they were that happy with the daily tennis grind.  I've also read too many books and articles about "journeyman" pros who probably spent the same amount of time as the OP's son playing golf at his age, but were constantly struggling to keep their tour card and living a hand-to-mouth existence.  Being a professional sportsman ain't all about the good life*.

Having said that, if they hadn't done the same as the OP's son we may not have had Tiger Woods, Rory McIroy, Roger Federer, Rafa Nadal, Novak Djokovich, the Williams sisters etc.  But so what?  The cost of failure just seems disproportionately high (and likely) to me.

Apologies to the OP for veering off topic again.  (And apologies for coming across as judgmental again.  I don't want to appear like that but it's a situation I really don't understand and am really interested in).

* It's a completely different era, but I remember when I first read Simon Hughes's book "A Lot of Hard Yakka" about being a pro cricketer in the 80s and 90s.  He may have enjoyed playing cricket and been good at it, but making a living at professional cricket was a completely different and precarious proposition.  Yeah, the rewards are much greater now, but I'm sure the life is just as boring and unfulfilling.

waamo

J_B said:

diggingdude said:

As someone who went to a far superior private school close by Ellesmere college .............

Hmm, I went to one of those ... i wonder which one you went to? ;-)

Would it begin with S and be near a footbridge into The Quarry?

Blackbeard_of_Perranporth

Here is two things about playing professional sport. My Uncle was a scout for a northern football club when I was at school. We all played up should he visit our team playing on a Wednesday evening. If he had not spoken to you before you were 10, he was not interested in you! Full Stop.

The dedication of people I knew of that age, my cousin who wanted to play tennis, meant that aged 9, he could wipe the floor of myself, even though I was 8 years older than him. In fact, he wiped the floor with his dad and my father. he did this because every time we went round to his house when I was at home, he was smashing tennis balls around the place. He was coached at the Tennis club maybe once or twice week! This is what dedication is required to get a level in sport. He never made it as a professional, others were even better than him, but he has made his mark as a PE teacher and coach in his life. 

OP, you were not misled by the college. No person I know, and I have seen professional players at various events that I have attended  as a photographer, has 100% coaching, and even professional dismiss the words of their management and coaching teams. Your son would have to put in a disciplined approach to his training and as such, like my father did when his golf driving was failing, extra effort into hitting the ball with his woods, until he regained his ability.

I doubt aged 10, your son had got up to this level of training and discipline. I would say, to the extent of a visit to the local golf pro, would had given him an insight into the level of dedication required.