Thursday, September 18 2014 – Wednesday, September 24 2014
What does it mean to be a TGGS girl? When someone calls us ‘nerds’ or ‘boffins’ it isn’t usually meant in praise. It is the first thing that springs to mind when the word ‘Grammar’ is mentioned: apparently attending here equates to zero fun, glasses and a boring personality. Because our second chromosome isn’t a Y, there is also a
t e n d e n c y t o b e c o m e ove rl y This isn’t something grades hooked on the ‘all-girls’ nature of alone can shape. our school. The ‘strong’, ‘confident’ women who leave here are made through But there is so much more to us the opportunities the school than these things suggest. offers, and the brilliant, supportIt is always said in assemblies ive environment we learn in. that it is this school’s aim to Don’t believe me? Well, we’ve mould us into ‘strong, confident got some articles to prove you The TGGS editorial team putting the supplement together at the Herald Express with sub-editor Nigel Lines wrong! young women’.
OUR 100 YEAR JOURNEY TO SUCCESS
Are we still ‘daring’ to be wise?
NOW AND THEN: Torquay Girls’ Grammar School headteacher Dr Nicholas Smith with some of our students. INSET: A photograph from sports day, 1929 TORQUIL MACLEOD TQTM20140715B-003_C
INSIDE: 100 years at the grammar — P2 The Unusual Suspects — P3 Dare to Lead — P4 was one that had to be challenged and defied. Now, in the present day, there are truly no limits to what we can do. Not only can we achieve our own dreams and aspirations — whatever the career — but we also have power and the confidence to help others achieve theirs, too. In 2003, for instance, the link between our school and an impover-
ished school in Kenya — called Imprezza — was created, enabling us to help and provide for students who would otherwise not get an education in Africa. In this year alone, we raised £15,000 for Imprezza. Through changing world views and laws in this country, women have been empowered economically, politically and socially; radically changing my experience of an all-
girls’ grammar school to the experience I would have had if I had were here say, one hundred, maybe even seventy or fifty, years ago. With this in mind, ‘Dare to be Wise’ seems immaterial to the girls now at the school. We don’t need to ‘dare’ to do anything because the beauty of it, is that we already can. One of the greatest things about the Grammar: no one tells you you can’t. No one tells you you ‘can’t’ because you’re a girl. No one tells you you ‘can’t’ because ‘it’s a man’s job’, or you’re aiming too high, or countless other reasons intellectual women have been told they ‘can’t’ over the past hundred years.
Looking to the future, then, ‘Dare to be Wise’ has been modified slightly for a new course the school are now offering: ‘Dare to Lead’. It gives girls at this school the necessary skills and self-belief needed to be successful in a place of work in a world where women now ‘can’. ‘Dare to be wise’ may be over-used in assemblies. Arguably, it may even be outdated, and inapplicable to us now, but it reminds us — as a school specifically for girls — how far we have come, and how much further we have the potential to go. LIZZIE REVELL
HEX-E01-S8
Next year will be the centenary year of the Girls’ Grammar School. In this insert, you will see how radically 100 years can change a school — especially when that school is single-sex and all-female. For example, three girls went to university from the Sixth Form in 1953; now 70 per cent of our girls go on to study at Russell Group universities. In the past, women came out of this school unable to attain a degree. They would have been expected to conform to society’s expectations of motherhood and stay-at-home wives. The school’s motto of ‘dare to be wise’ seems so applicable to this generation because the role of females in the world, intellectually,