Competition Houses

The Competition House system was initially set up to provide a healthy competition for the boys (and staff) incorporating academic, cultural and sporting pursuits.  Many traditional boarding schools originally based competitions on boarding and day boy houses.  However, this can be quite divisive, and when John Norman established Rathkeale, he set up 4 competition houses comprising a mix of both boarders and dayboys called: Shackleton (Green), Scott (Red), Hillary (Yellow), and Churchill (Blue).  Due to fluctuations in the school roll during the 1980s, this changed back to competing boarding houses and the dayboy house, Winchester.  The competition houses were reconfigured again in 2009 to give us the three houses we have today.