Matraville Sports High School has long been celebrated as a fertile breeding ground for football stars, with rugby union's legendary Ella brothers and scores of NRL players among its notable alumni.
But principal Nerida Walker worries the school's impressive football credentials have been detrimental to its image, driving away many local families who question its academic merit.
"A lot of parents see Matraville as a sports high and they think the school is just for sporty kids and that you need to go somewhere else if you want academic success," said Ms Walker, who joined the school last year. "And, because rugby league is one of our sports, anything associated with league somehow leaves a bit of residue in our school."
Since the specialist sports stream was introduced in 2001, the school has been shrinking, sliding from 338 to 287 students over the past four years.
The drop off reflects a broader trend, with numbers falling at six of the state's seven public sports high schools since 2010.
Ms Walker is careful to emphasise the strengths of the selective sports stream, which brings tremendous opportunities to her public school students. But she does not want it to define the school and points out many of her gifted students are not athletes.
In an effort to transform its image, the school has teamed up with the University of NSW's centre for gifted education and 25 of its brightest students are attending after school and holiday programs.
Six received scholarships to this week join 200 other students at the university's three-day holiday program for gifted and talented students, which includes workshops in architecture, cinema, globalisation, electronics and the human brain.
Katherine Thompson, who co-ordinates the program, hopes it will raise aspirations at the south-east Sydney school, where many students come from disadvantaged backgrounds and almost a third of the population is indigenous.
"It's intimidating going into any context you've never been into before, so our hope is that many of these bright kids will remember UNSW and it will open their eyes to going to university one day," she said. "They will realise that nobody is going to look at you funny, you belong here just as much as anyone else and you have a right to be here and learning can be cool and fun."
Sara Berger said she was surprised to learn she had been identified as gifted and did not mind spending part of her school holiday at the university.
"They let you do stuff of your own free will and don't force you to do things. They make it fun," the 12-year-old said. "I've only started thinking about [university] recently when I found out I was in gifted and talented."
