GSA Heads look forward to the coming academic year

Look what you’re doing GSA Heads look forward to the coming academic year

Gwen Byrom, Loughborough High School, GSA President 2018

My hope for our schools and the young women in them in the coming year is that they continue to grow into principled, strong individuals. My abiding wish for all students is that they find the path in life which is right for them, and that they feel able to articulate that and bring it into reality in their lives with us and beyond. Confucius is credited as saying ‘find a job you love and you will never work again’: finding that abiding love is an important part of realising who you are. Our schools help our girls to do this, but I hope that we also give them the confidence to know when something isn’t right, and the courage to walk away if they need to. The recent suffragette commemorations have shown us how much previous generations have fought for the right, not just for the vote, but to own their own lives – a right which is still too easily given away. Too many girls in the world do what they ought, rather than what they dream, and they need us to help them find strong role models, cheerleaders and a strong network of support and encouragement.

Sue Hincks, Bolton School Girls’ Division, GSA President-Elect for 2019

I would like girls’ independent schools to be recognised as centres of academic, pastoral and extracurricular excellence which enable girls to thrive and fulfil their potential by promoting positive female role models and encouraging girls to embrace opportunities, regardless of traditional gender stereotypes. The collaboration of headteachers in GSA enables those of us who care most about girls’ education to share and develop good practice as well as to be a mouthpiece for girls’ interests in UK education.

Jane Gandee, St Swithun’s School

I ducked behind a convenient pillar in Winchester Cathedral to take my shoes off for a moment before our final event of term, the Valedictory Service, and imagined a newspaper headline: footwear is a feminist issue. After all, a formally dressed man does not typically experience toe-crunching discomfort. My aspirations for girls’ schools for 2018-19 are informed by the above. I hope that we will continue to challenge unhelpful stereotypes, from the frivolous, such as that every smart dress requires a high heel, to the serious, such as that all girls need to be taught in the same particular way. I believe that we must avoid the unhelpful boy/girl dichotomy so beloved of the media and focus on educating a range of female students with different personalities, attitudes and aptitudes. Let’s tell the world that we are experts in girls’ education not because girls have special needs, but because in girls’ schools we neither pigeon-hole nor stereotype. Let’s highlight the innovative teaching, the opportunities for character development and the compassionate and courageous young women who emerge from girls’ schools. Let’s speak up for what we believe to be right: a world in which character always trumps appearance.

Dorothy MacGinty, Kilgraston School

The global phenomenon of the ‘Hear Her’ movement is a result of recent high-profile alleged sexual misconduct cases. However, for me, the genesis of that campaign goes much deeper. As the Head of a leading independent girls’ school, I take equality as a given. What I want, and what I anticipate Kilgraston girls will expect, is more than equality. Our pupils leave this school with a sense of anything, really anything, being possible. Nothing should stand in the way of their goal: not convention, peers, personal doubt or lack of ambition. As recently as a decade ago, I felt the pressure not to recommend certain tertiary routes to teenage girls. The ‘safe’ roads for the brightest girls – law, medicine, languages – always attracted the cream of the crop. But what of our future engineers, cutting-edge scientists, revolutionary technologists? The national average for girls leaving school to pursue a university STEM subject is 24% (source: WISE 2016/17). This year, 65% of Kilgraston girls have been offered places to study these subjects at undergraduate level. This result takes investment and commitment. From the age of ten our pupils are taught the Sciences by subject-specific specialists. Aspiration is a mind-set, your personal take on the world. Don’t just ‘hear her’ – listen carefully.

Isabel Tobias, Redmaids’ High School

I see a renaissance in education for girls as society seeks new responses to gender discrimination and inequality. For a time, it was unfashionable to suggest that these problems remain, but girls’ schools are again at the forefront of challenging stereotypes and enabling girls to develop as individuals. Alumnae tell me that at our all-girls school they did not think of themselves as female or as limited. They were free to take risks, but in the work place they are treated differently because of their gender. They are also aware that the world of work was not constructed by women and that there is pressure to adopt masculine characteristics in order to fit in. When leading companies were asked to explain why they

still have few or no women on their boards, their responses indicated the continuing prevalence of the view that women are ‘not like them’, or ‘not tough enough’. This indicates an unjustifiable presumption about leadership and management style. My school, and others like it, gives girls the freedom and space to develop the resilience, positive self-esteem and interconnectedness that makes them strong as young women and ready to shape the world in their own image.

Dr Millan Sachania, Streatham & Clapham High School GDST

In June I was delighted that my school, Streatham & Clapham High School GDST, participated in the unveiling of a blue plaque in Tooting at the childhood home of Sadie Crawford (1885-1965). Rightly described on the plaque as a Jazz Pioneer, in the first two decades of the Twentieth Century Ms Crawford intrepidly crossed the globe performing vaudeville and jazz in Europe and the USA, pre-revolutionary Russia, South America, Australia and New Zealand. For years, such women as she have been forgotten, but now talented and pioneering women are increasingly and rightfully receiving the recognition they deserve but have never enjoyed.

In her old school, we have just inaugurated an annual ‘Sadie Crawford Music Scholarship’ in her honour. Sadie’s personality brilliantly represents the characteristics that we should be seeking to develop in all our pupils. A pioneering spirit; the courage to venture beyond the lines of convention; high standards; an appetite for adventure; integrity, authenticity, creativity; and a sense of fun. These are the ensigns of our educational sector. Let us find ways of raising them even higher and flying them even more proudly in the ensuing months.

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St Swithun’s take part in community service week

In the hottest week of the year, twenty-five girls from St Swithun’s School volunteered their time to help re-launch UNIT 12, a recently established facility to provide activities for 7-18 year olds and semi-retired and retired residents of Winchester. This marked St Swithun’s inaugural community service week for Year 11 girls after their GCSEs and was part of a three-day social action project organised by Community First Volunteer Service, culminating in a barbeque attended by The Mayor of Winchester.

Louise Todino, Director at UNIT 12, said ‘I have thoroughly enjoyed working in partnership with Community First and St Swithun’s to open our doors to the public to see what we do here. I would like to thank all 25 girls from St Swithun’s who helped out with the activities for the launch. They have been absolutely amazing, have shown great initiative and their enthusiasm was infectious; they are a real credit to St Swithun’s School. I would also like to thank Community First for their help facilitating this event and Tesco and Homebase for their support.’

Volunteer Phoebe Shannon said ‘Over the three days I have really enjoyed the inter-generational dance workshop with pupils and parents from Winnall Primary School and transforming the garden into a more usable space with its own vegetable patch. Having just finished my GCSEs it has been really great to use this time to give something back to the community and I would recommend any young people to volunteer.’

Simon Mayes, Head of Outreach and Partnerships at St Swithun’s endorsed the school’s strong links with the local community and hopes that the involvement with UNIT 12 will be a long-term commitment.