Richmond, Virginia, USA is beautiful at this time of the year. Warm, green, relaxed … and, currently, host to several hundred passionate educators of girls who are attending the annual conference of the National Coalition of Girls’ Schools, the theme of which this year is ‘From STEM to STEAM: Girls’ Schools Leading the Way’. A …
Category: teaching
Jun 19
Recruiting great teachers: the role of ambitious school leaders
Sir Michael Wilshaw is rarely uncontroversial, and at times his talk on teacher recruitment at the Wellington College Festival of Education, true to form, ruffled more than a few feathers. However, it was hard to argue with his key message, namely that we need to recruit more great teachers, and we need to think creatively …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Jan 28
Raising Girls: why schools and parents make a perfect combination
Steve Biddulph’s latest book, Raising Girls, caused a bit of a stir when it was published earlier this month, and with reason: it is a very sensible addition to the literature on how girls grow up, and parents of girls should find it of genuine interest. Pressures on girls in our society are enormous – …
Sep 29
What do you call a collection of 5 Headmistresses?
Thursday this week marked a momentous occasion – the hosting in school of a meeting and lunch for no fewer than five Headmistresses of St Mary’s Calne: past, present and future. Their tenure spanned a period of over 40 years, from Joyce Walters (now Joyce Lynn) (1972-1985) through Delscey Burns (1985-1996) and Carolyn Shaw (1996-2003) …
Aug 22
Good news about Physics … well, sort of.
Figures for this year’s A Levels, released last week, show that there has been another increase this year (on average, 3%) in the number of students taking A Level Science and Maths subjects. Physics has seen an especially positive rise: the total number of taking Physics A Level this year increased by 5%, up from …
Jun 04
A marvellous day – and a tremendous cause
What historic times we are living in! Yesterday – the day of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee on the Thames – may have dawned grey and cold, and the rain may have caught up with us all before the afternoon was out, but there was no denying the fact that everyone who was present on the …
Apr 28
Why should girls’ schools have to make their case? A riposte to Lord Lucas
If you read today’s Times or Telegraph, you will see headlines that suggest that girls’ schools are a dying breed: ‘Pull your socks up or you’ll die out, peer tells girls’ schools’; ‘Girls’ schools ‘going out of fashion’, expert warns’ – although the print edition of The Times has the rather more accurate headline “Girls’ …