Nevermind!
I was using this in the top page:
$postslist = query_posts('numberposts=100§ion_name=courses');
as opposed to this in the subpage:
$postslist = get_posts('numberposts=100§ion_name=courses');
Coding 101 error, my bad. Other than that it works a charm and I’ve put it in our standards to use for other client work. Cheers.