All Prime Minister’s Scholarships will now be aligned to SPARC’s High Performance Strategy. Only those people with the ability to impact SPARC’s high performance mission of “more New Zealanders winning on the world stage” will be eligible to be considered for a scholarship.
The main feature of the changes that will immediately impact our athletes and our sport will be:
Our sport will no longer have guaranteed five scholarships. The athlete scholarship programme will be contestable within and across sports.
CLOSING DATE For 2008 scholarship applications to be recieived by FeNZ by 5PM 15 NOVEMBER 2007.
Background Recently, SPARC reviewed the Prime Minister’s Scholarship programmes for athletes, coaches, officials and support team members. Some changes have been made to ensure the programme is better managed and aligned to SPARC’s High Performance Strategy 2006-2012.
The key changes for athletes Scholarships will be aligned to SPARC’s High performance Strategy Athletes (from any sport) who can impact SPARC’s high performance mission will be considered for a scholarship. The athlete scholarship programme will be contestable within and across sports. No sport will be guaranteed a scholarship quota. Applications will be ranked by your sport and measured against specific criteria. These criteria include a requirement for current recipients to meet all athlete requirements whilst studying through the programme. Funding for the athlete scholarship programme will be capped at $2.325 million per annum (including Gold level Scholarships). Gold level Scholarships will be capped at $0.2 million per annum. Applicants must apply at the 1 December intake.
The key changes for coaches, support team members and officials Scholarships will be aligned to SPARC’s High performance Strategy No sport will be guaranteed a scholarship quota. Applications will be ranked by your sport and/or New Zealand Academy of Sport regional operations and measured against specific criteria. There will be one application deadline for all scholarships: 5pm on 1 December each year. Operating guidelines for coaches, support team members and officials will be simplified into one document (athletes will have a separate document). There will be greater flexibility in how much money scholarship recipients can receive and a greater ability to reimburse for income lost whilst on a scholarship. SPARC will ensure key high performance personnel are systematically enhancing their impact on athlete performance.
When will these changes come into effect? These changes will come into effect for the 2008 scholarship intake, so all applications will need to be ready by 1 December 2007.
Where to find more information Full programme guidelines (including contacts for more information) will be posted on the High performance Sport section of SPARC’s website www.sparc.org.nz
