Head Mistress’ Welcome
One of the great joys about LEH is the amazing sense of community and connection we share, a lasting sense of loyalty and pride that remains with so many of you long after you’ve left. It’s why we are focusing on the theme of Teamwork: Together We Can in this issue of Holles Connect magazine: LEH is a close-knit community with shared goals and ambitions. Nowhere is this seen more clearly than on our playing fields, netball courts and boat house as pupils come together to take part in competitive sports. In addition to encouraging team spirit, sports can help our children to develop character and learn important social brain skills, as our Director of Sport Dani Mugridge explains on page 28. The benefits of playing competitive sport in school can extend well beyond the classroom, as several of our alumnae, who excelled as pupils, have gone on demonstrate. See pages 32 to 43. Stephanie Hilborne, Class of 1986, who now heads up Women in
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Sport, sets out how the real benefits of playing netball for the school only became apparent to her in later life. See page 32. I am often asked by prospective parents and others who visit LEH, about my philosophy of education – on what do I base my school leadership? This is a very complex question, but I frequently sum it up with one word: kindness. And there is a reason for this: being kind underpins almost every other desired behaviour in human beings. Kindness asks you to attend to others and not always pay attention to yourself. The practice of kindness inspires and deepens our connection to ourselves and to one another. It binds us together as a team, as a community.
Empathy allows us to see connections rather than differences and this sense of supporting each other and of being on the same side is one of our central tenets. Our Head of Middle School, Katie Sinnett, really focuses on this when pupils arrive at LEH in the Thirds (see her article on page 29).
Kindness binds us together as a team, as a community.
Occasionally, I come across alumnae who attended LEH in years gone by and sadly don’t feel that sense of connection and loyalty to the school. They felt that academic achievement was valued above all else and if they weren’t headed for an Oxbridge scholarship themselves, the experience
