Category: Headteachers

X Factor, bullying, and some reflections for young people

The GSA conference in Bristol last week proved to be a very stimulating few days, and – as is common on these occasions – the whole event kicked off with a 30 minute speech from the President, so I had prepared my 4000 words and I delivered them on Monday to everyone. Most of the …

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The Young Ambassador, feather earrings and dinner – a winning combination

When I took up my role as President of the Girls’ Schools Association this year, I really wanted to ensure that I used the platform I was given in order to be able to achieve more than just a representation of the value of girls’ education. I say to the girls at school that they …

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Heads of Girls’ Schools: making a real world of difference

I returned yesterday from the annual Girls’ Schools Association which I was leading in my capacity as this year’s President, and I can report that it was an amazing occasion. The programme – based on the theme of ‘Making a World of Difference’ – was extremely full, packed with speakers who stimulated and challenged, and …

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Making a World of Difference: preparing for the annual conference of Heads of the Girls’ Schools Association

Monday marks the beginning of the annual conference of the Girls’ Schools Association, and therefore marks the nearing of the end of my year as President of the GSA. It has been an astonishingly stimulating year, and I shall reflect further on it as the year actually reaches its end, but before this, we have …

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Social media – the good news

Working with teenagers, a considerable amount of the educational discussion about social media focuses on the negative; the time-wasting, the distraction from study, the unhealthy preoccupation with a screen rather than more balanced fresh air and exercise, the reputational risk of posting unwise comments, and the dangers of cyber-bullying. These are all very real issues, …

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Change in the air … Australia is beckoning

I say to my girls at school often that they should make the very most of their lives, as they only have one life, and every moment of it is precious. When opportunities come along, they should be grasped and girls should not be afraid to move outside the comfortable zones in which their lives …

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Private schools with a public purpose

On Monday this week, St Mary’s Calne and the Girls’ Schools Association hosted a seminar in London to discuss the educational hot topic of our time: how independent schools can become more and more involved in the state sector, blurring boundaries which have grown up, and retuning, some would argue, to the original aims of …

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What a world-class education really means

One of the other speakers I very much enjoyed listening to at the IAPS conference (see my blog on Sunday) was a teacher from Windlesham House School in West Sussex, a prep school teaching girls and boys up to the age of 13. He was speaking about the partnership that Windlesham has with The CRED …

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Re-forming the state education landscape in this country

There has of late been a whirlwind of activity in the field of national educational debate in the UK, with a drive on the part of Government to encourage independent schools to sponsor failing state schools as they become Academies – effectively, semi-independent state schools. (I say ‘semi-independent’ because I have yet to be convinced …

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The Pseudoscience of Single-Sex Schooling: do single-sex schools really make pupils more sexist?

I wish that I could gain access to the full study published in this month’s edition of Science journal which appears to conclude that single-sex education is bad, wrong, immoral, not worth it – you can imagine the tone. As the website of the American Association of the Advancement of Science, who publish Science does …

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