The Two Roedeans Come Together

What a privilege it was to welcome 56 students and 5 members of staff from Roedean South Africa to Roedean in Brighton. They are in the middle of a literary and cultural tour, which has taken them to Edinburgh, Warwick, Windsor, Oxford, and London, and it was wonderful for them to spend the day with us!

This visit was a repeat of a visit to Roedean in Brighton in 2018, which was followed by a return trip to Johannesburg for a group of 12 students and four staff. Since then, our two schools have enjoyed lots of joint projects, including Mrs Dlamini, the Executive Director of Roedean South Africa, speaking at our International Women’s Day festival last term, lots of corresponding between studetns via social media, a joint virtual ‘race around the world’ during Covid lockdowns when we collectively walked or ran over 40,000 kilometres, and, most recently, a former Roedean student on a gap year spent 5 weeks volunteering at the school in South Africa.

The students were outstanding ambassadors for their school – they were engaging, funny, interested, and, most of all, desperate to see our school, and see what is the same and what is different. There are lots of similarities still, despite the distance between the schools: the most obvious one is that our holistic ethos is absolutely fundamental to the education provided – Roedean is celebrating 125 years on the current site this year, and was founded in 1885 by three Lawrence sisters, and Roedean South Africa was founded in 1903 by a fourth sister and her friend, and their vision, that girls and young women deserve access to the very best all-round education to prepare them to make their mark in the world, remains at the very heart of what we do. On a more lighthearted note, other similarities are that both schools also have the tradition of hand-shaking at the starts and ends of term, which does not appear to happen anywhere else, and female teachers are called ‘Madam’ in both schools too! There were also some differences, and it was fun to see our visitors creating a ‘wish list’ for their school from what they saw, including having a Farm on site, which they loved!

Our visitors enjoyed a tour of the School, they attended lessons to see what teaching in the UK is like, and we held a Chapel service, at which our new Head, Mrs Green, and Mrs Dlamini both addressed the students and staff, as did students representing both schools. A highlight was hearing the Roedean South Africa students singing Malibongwe to us all – the unbelievable wall of sound and sheer sense of enjoyment simply shone out. It was brilliant!

The visit ended with the students going down through our ‘secret’ tunnel to the sea, and walking along to the marina, from where they could look back at our school on top of the cliffs. It was a great pleasure to welcome such a brilliant group of students and staff to Roedean, and we are already thinking about when we might go back to South Africa.