It is curious how emotive discussions can become when the subject is that of teaching multiplication tables in schools. Nicky Morgan, the UK Secretary of State for Education, recently announced that new online tests of children’s ability to recount their times tables up to and including 12 x 12, would be piloted this year for …
Category: mathematics
Oct 11
So proud of our girls!
This International Day of the Girl Child has been the most amazing experience at Ascham. It was preceded by a week of awareness-raising, as we discussed the significance of 11th October – only the second ever International Day on which the girl and her latent power to change the world have sat at the heart …
Sep 07
Walking the world and keeping up the pressure: looking ahead to the International Day of the Girl
As has been well-documented in this blog, Thursday 11th October 2012 was the very first ever International Day of the Girl. It was a day that was celebrated across the world; in its honour the London Eye turned pink, as did the Eiffel Tower and the Pyramids. Plan, the international children’s charity instrumental in making …
Aug 17
Telling the stories of our lives
I was very struck yesterday to hear how our visiting speaker at the senior school assembly described her job. Professor Mary Crock, Professor of Law at Sydney University, and a specialist in immigration law, described her work as the telling of stories about people’s lives, and said that she felt honoured to be working in …
Jul 05
Listen out for Malala
Next week, on Friday 12 July – her 16th birthday – Malala Yousafzai will talk to the United Nations, and we should all listen. Most people know Malala’s story: it began when she started to write a blog in 2009 for the BBC Urdu channel about life in Pakistan’s Swat Valley. At the time, private …
Jun 29
Nelson Mandela and the education of girls
Nelson Mandela is a truly great man, and much has been, and will be written, I am sure, in the coming weeks and months, about his many achievements in his home country of South Africa, and throughout Africa and the world. In and amongst all of these tributes, we should not forget his deep-rooted commitment …
Jun 22
“Devious” girls? How the misuse of statistics undermines our girls.
My attention was caught earlier this week by an article in the Australian Daily Telegraph: in the print edition the headline read Study reveals devious girls lead way in tormenting kids; online, the headline read AIFS bullying study shows girls are more devious. The leading paragraph supported both these titles: “Girls are more devious than boys …
Jun 14
Girls, girls, girls … how girls are changing the world
Yesterday turned into somewhat of a celebration at Ascham of how girls and women have changed and are changing our world, together with a reminder of what needs to be done still to make this world a fairer, more equal and more harmonious place. To a certain extent, every day in a girls’ school is …
May 10
Why it is important for girls to blow their own trumpets
A recent initiative at Wimbledon High School for Girls in London has received quite a bit of coverage in the UK – the school encouraged the girls over a number of months to scribble down their thoughts whenever they realised that they were proud of something that they had done and then the school spent …
Mar 04
Stop telling girls untruths about Maths
Many international brows are beaten on a regular basis about why girls do not seem to choose to study Mathematics with the same enthusiasm or to the same level as boys, and the most recent manifestation of this was on the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald. A recent Australian study has shown that …