Ms. Cathy Ellott

FROM STREATHAM AND CLAPHAM HIGH SCHOOL, SW LONDON

Located in South West London, Streatham and Clapham High School is one of the UK’s leading private girls’ schools, taking students from Nursery through to Sixth Form. The school is part of the Girls’ Day School Trust, an organisation which has pioneered girls’ education since 1872. Streatham and Clapham emphasise this community and equality in education throughout their school.

Ms. Cathy Ellott, Head of Streatham and Clapham High School, speaks to us about Streatham and Clapham’s holistic approach to education, the role of social change and responsibility in the student experience and the school’s diverse and multifaith cohort.

Can you tell us a little about how you perceive the ethos and values at Streatham and Clapham and where you hope to go with this going forwards?

There’s a really strong sense here that we’re a family - it’s not about creating the product of a great individual that goes on to be successful, it’s about nurturing these young people to be the very best versions of themselves.

In terms of ethos and values, one of the legacies that stayed with me from St. Mary’s is the sense that we look to core values as a foundation point from which we live our lives. I thought really carefully over the summer about moving into a secular, multifaith contextStreatham and Clapham is the most diverse school in the GDST, so where would I find those rooted values that I think form the foundation of a really great school? Eventually I landed on four: kindness, respect, integrity and compassion.

We talk quite proudly about the fact that we’re a quirky school. We love the fact that we are a mixture of different strengths and capabilities and we have girls who have quite a wide range of academic abilities. We look for the ways in which we value ourselves and one another, along all sorts of axes and indices. It is not just about the hard data of exam results that you get at the end of your school career. While they are an important part of what a girl takes with her into the next stage of her educational journey, they aren’t everything. I’m really interested in how those girls are flourishing when they’re 25, or when they’re 35 and thinking about their own daughter’s education - is what we have inculcated in them still with them and are our values something that they come back to, in terms of how they learn and live their lives? Our ethos is about that sense of stretch and challenge for the individual and recognising strength and opportunity with no invisible girls.

You were at St. Mary’s Ascot, which was obviously a primarily Catholic school, but the community at Streatham and Clapham is very diverse. Are you enjoying the inclusivity and celebration of multiple faiths?

We have 33 different nationalities and 27 different home languages, so the girls come and expect there to be diversity in every moment as they walk around the school. What I want to engender more and more is a sense of warmth, curiosity and interest in one another’s faith and non-faith experiences.

In my first week at Streatham and Clapham, I was sitting with some Year 11 girls and they said it would be really helpful if, in the winter months, we could have a designated prayer space for afternoon prayer. These were Muslim girls wanting to find a prayer space and I was so pleased they were able to ask me about that because we could then find that for them; I was only too happy to facilitate it. You need to create a culture in which young people feel they can ask, especially if it’s something that hasn’t been thought of or offered before.

We’ve redesigned our School Council: we’ve got 100 girls on the school council with representatives in four different committees from every tutor group, so that they can give feedback every half term on things that matter to their tutor group and their girls. We have a ‘You said, we did’ assembly every half term where we complete that feedback loop, updating the girls on topics that matter to them. Recently we’d had some reports of girls feeling uncomfortable about the way their hair was being touched and we were able to re-launch The Halo Code as part of our uniform policy, as well as give some more general education around respecting personal space, which some of the younger girls needed. That’s come from us having focus groups and feedback groups, as well as a lovely EDIB working party - equality, diversity, inclusion and belonging are integral across both our Prep and Senior schools. I’ve been so grateful for the way parents have leant into that and have given us frank, challenging and supportive feedback so we can address things accordingly.

I think you need to be brave as a school leader, you have to be ready to face feedback that might be difficult to hear or where you may not have all the answers. You just have to try to work humbly together with your community to understand that better. I’ve found that that’s been a real honour in what we’ve done, not just in terms of race and ethnicity, but also exploring sexuality for young people within the school: we’ve just been celebrating LGBTQIA+ History Month, talking about inspiring role models in assemblies and also making the month more personal.

We understand that, at Streatham and Clapham, you take a holistic approach to education. Could you tell us some more about this?

That comes back to the fact that we want to enable the young women who leave us to flourish, not just when they’re 18, going on to further education, but when they’re 25, moving into the world of work. Are they prepared for the relationships and connections that they will build in those more complex scenarios? I also think that there can be danger if one maintains a rigidly academic focus that lands your children in silos of educational experience, identifying themselves as being an extremely good mathematician while not valuing the fact that they’re also a brilliant trampolinist. Whereas, what one can genuinely celebrate here is that every girl has strengths - we love academic success, we love academic progress and we love the fact that we have girls excelling across all sorts of different areas; we have an energy and girls that love trying things out have all sorts of quirky opportunities to do so.

One of the things I’m most proud of is that we have an enrichment programme called Kinza. It comes from the Arabic term for ‘hidden treasure’ and every fortnight there is an afternoon dedicated to this across the school, throughout all year groups. The girls get to partake in all sorts of different things, such as horse riding, bouldering, jewellery making, skateboarding, script writing, filmmaking and circus skills. Some parents asked me recently: “Well, what’s the academic value of that? Wouldn’t they be better off in lessons?” However, I would say this is an indicator of a true

TURN BACK TO PAGES 11-14 for children’s books about social justice commitment to holistic learning, because what the girls are doing is learning other key skills, like getting on with other people, maybe teaching somebody else to do something - which is such a good way of learning for yourself - and, crucially, doing it with girls from different year groups.

A main area of focus for our magazine is equality, diversity and inclusion. On your school website, it says that: ‘Social justice will be even more of a golden thread that runs through our work in the coming months and years.’ How do you plan to bring this to fruition at Streatham & Clapham High School in your role as Head?

I feel it’s so important that we engage young women in understanding the challenges that face us as a society and community going forward. Therefore, sustainability is a really key focus for us as a school. In order to ensure that we are sustainable as an organisation, we talk to the girls about things like our energy choices and energy bills; we have a big poster up in our dining hall where we record how much food waste we throw out every week so that girls can be thoughtful about how much food they put on their plates. We also have our Eco Warriors in the school, who go around turning off all the lights - we’ve had to put stickers on the sockets to make sure they don’t turn off things that shouldn’t be turned off, because they’re so vehement about it!

I love the fact that there is social change and social responsibility in the daily lived experiences of the girls here and that’s something we’re really trying to engender. It comes through working in the local community, working with the elderly, with local state primary schools, with homeless organisations and food banks and so on. This involves the girls actually going and doing work in those organisations, as well as raising money and awareness. We do have a global vision for this too, so we are partnering with schools in Kenya, Nepal and the Congo, where it’s about education exchange. Whenever you have these kinds of educational partnerships with the maintained sector, locally and internationally, it must be with the spirit of mutuality. This is a really open sense of what we learn from one another and the richness that we experience through connecting with one another. www.schs.gdst.net

Regarding your vision for the future for Streatham and Clapham - I think you’ve given us a very clear picture, but is there anything in particular that you’d like to mention?

I suppose, if the holistic strength of the school is truly realised, then in time we’ll become the nobrainer school for local families who’ve got girls and are thinking: “I want all-girls’ independent education from my girl, I want somewhere that’s going to be energised and ambitious and see her for who she is.” And then they’ll go: “Well, of course, Streatham and Clapham.” I understand that parents want different things for their children and they come to it with their own set of experiences of school and aspirations for their children. However, as a mother, I know what I want to say is that whatever I did, muddling through parenting them as children, I have ended up with really happy, interested and interesting, independent young people who understand emotional regulation, who understand that things are complex, that it’s about shades of nuance, that there aren’t always simple answers, that are critical in their thinking skills.

One thing I would really say, and I’m really glad I’m going to end here: it’s about friendship. I think the friends that girls develop in all-girls’ schools beat any other friendships. They love the fact that, in an all-girls’ school, every subject is a girls’ subject, all the sports are girls’ sports. Fundamentally, I come back to the fact it’s about the relationships and friendships. This is a school that has historically grown amazing friendships and I hope that’s what we’ll continue to do.

We would like to thank Ms. Cathy Ellott, Head at Streatham and Clapham High School, for giving up her time to speak with us.