A parent of a former senior student at Scots, who declined to be named, says the school's sports program went further still. ''Dr Ian Lambert decided they should win a basketball premiership, so they went out and basically bought an entire team with scholarships and dumped the team that should have been in the firsts. The school's director of sports science, Tensing Tsewang. Credit:Scots College website ''It was the most appalling way to manage students and to force fee-paying parents to subsidise the quest of one person.'' It is a charge Lambert denies. But The King's School headmaster Tim Hawkes admits most schools, including his, ''have offered inducements to a few good sportsmen''. ''Schools have long learnt the rhetoric needed to defend the deliberate importation of gifted sportsmen,'' he said. ''The practice can be disguised in so many ways. However, it seldom reaps a long-term reward.''

Hawkes suggests sporting scholarships should be tolerated as readily as academic scholarships, particularly as sport is a professional career for some. But Richard Fletcher, an academic who specialises in boys' education and development, says such scholarships add to the ''commercialisation and commodification'' of sport. ''If you're buying in players so that you can win, it seems you have lost the plot because the idea isn't to have the most financial resources and show it,'' says Fletcher, a senior lecturer at the Family Action Centre. ''There is a lot of evidence about how beneficial sport can be for boys … It would be a pity if the area was contaminated by this idea it is only about money and winning.'' The use of sports supplements by schoolboys is also a concern. It was revealed in May that The Scots College had accepted a rugby tournament scholarship from a sports nutrition company, which sells products promising ''explosive gains in muscle size and strength''. A Sydney University study last year of 1090 boys from public and private high schools in NSW found more than a quarter of those in years 11 and 12 reported having used supplements, vitamins or minerals, to gain weight and muscle.

''Coaches are using whatever they can and I think it's very tempting for them to be using whatever they can get away with,'' study author Jennifer O'Dea says. ''It seems to be right throughout every sport that involves strength and endurance, especially in boys. ''There is definitely that expectation … that part of the progression towards professionalism is doing whatever you can to get the edge and taking whatever the coach tells you to take.'' The code of practice for GPS schools, such as The Scots College, warns against this trend. ''Care should be taken to exclude from our schools practices which place the pursuit of victory above those aspects of sport concerned with enjoyment, balanced development and good sportsmanship,'' the code reads. ''The spirit of the amateur - in its best sense - should remain the ideal which guides these aspects of school sports.'' The decision by five GPS schools to boycott The Scots College over alleged breaches of its code may be seen as a small step towards keeping that spirit alive.

Do you know more? Email peter.munro@fairfaxmedia.com.au Scots great at premiership dominance, but statistics tell another story For The Scots College starting five, winning a GPS premiership (the sporting equivalent of the Holy Grail, as the school's headmaster calls it) has become a walkover. They won their third straight premiership this year. In previous years Scots has jointly claimed the prize, but this time the school was undefeated, including a memorable spanking of Sydney Grammar by 146 to 40. It is not the first time a GPS team has gone undefeated - Newington achieved the same feat in the 2008-09 season - but statistics suggest such dominance is rare.

Scots scored more than 1300 points in this season's GPS championships - almost 300 points more than the average top team's total score in the past five seasons. It is a remarkable rise for a school that struggled to win two games and tied for the wooden spoon in 2009-10. Twelve Scots players play on representative teams, five of them at a national level, including youth Olympian Kai Healy. Since 2010 the school has gone on to win this year's state champions, the independent schools' championships and a prestigious Canadian invitational tournament, the Bedford Road. This year Scots has claimed premierships in GPS rugby and open cross-country championships. The college's snow sports team also won the national championships and up to three recent alumni are expected to compete in next year's Winter Olympics.

Since 2009-10, the school's academic performance has slipped a little, however. The Herald's HSC rankings show it has fallen from the state's 67th best-performing school to 80th place last year. This year's fees for Scots, one of NSW's most expensive private schools, rose by 5 per cent to $30,900. Loading The school's alumni include construction billionaire Harry Triguboff, former Anglican archbishop Peter Jensen, artist Brett Whitely and Wallabies legend Ken Catchpole. James Robertson