Create Your Own Bursary

My friend Rob asked me a question about starting a bursary.  Recap: Rob is a good friend from back home that we lost touch with but have recently found again.  It’s like my favourite Thundercats toy has been found in between the couch cushions!

Anyhow, Rob is a high school teacher and he is thinking about starting up a bursary.  Here’s some details from him:

I sit on a committee that choses who gets what bursary for those that graduate. I would like to create a bursary myself and give it to a deserving student. Where you (and others) come in is setting up a criteria for said bursary. I don’t want it to be for a highest average or course specific. There are way too many of those already. I was thinking along the lines of most improved or something. The only thing is most improved in what? I have no idea. What kind of bursary would you like to see given?
I thought I would throw this out to the masses to get a bunch of different opinions.  In terms of most improved…sounds like a good idea actually.  I know that my Great Philosophers professor indicated that her marking is subjective on a variety of factors, one being that if she sees you did poorly on the first midterm but really improved on the second midterm and the exam, then she would weigh the mark more with the improved marks because it shows that you’ve grasped the material after being scared from the first midterm.  😉  So I don’t know how bursaries usually work, are they for the entire high school term or just the final senior year?  Either way, I suppose you could easily find the most improved in terms of marks by finding the largest variance between the beginning of the (term/senior year) and comparing it to the last.  Of course, this would need to be a positive variance, we aren’t talking about giving a bursary to someone who bombed.
I don’t think you would meet much resistance on giving out a bursary for most improved but I hope to heck that it doesn’t create this new culture in school where students who know they don’t have good enough marks to get the usual bursaries (like for being the smartest, happy go-lucky kid in school) would just fail their first test so they can come back and destroy the second test, hence, creating a spot in the running for most improved.  You gotta watch out for those students…they’re shifty like that.  And smart.

What other ideas do we have out there for a bursary for high school students?  Share the wealth of your brains.