After the distasteful scenes leading up to it, Baroness Thatcher’s funeral yesterday was a dignified and noble affair, with the streets of London lined with people who were there, overwhelmingly, to acknowledge her long service to the country, and to mark her life and her passing. The Bishop of London, in his funeral address, was …
Category: Uncategorized
Apr 13
What we can and should do NOW to make gender equality happen
A really interesting and stimulating report was published a couple of weeks ago by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), which justifiably claims to be the UK’s leading progressive thinktank. Their reports are always worth reading – full, detailed, current and to the point, they are a wealth of information as well as, in …
Apr 05
Georgia Willson-Pemberton. RIP.
Early on Friday morning I received a distressing message on Twitter from a former member of staff at one of my previous schools, alerting me to the news that was splashed all over the UK press, and on the front page of the Daily Mail: the inquest into the death of Georgia Willson-Pemberton. The coroner …
Apr 01
Why it is important to want to be different
It is a tradition at Ascham that in the run-up to Easter the youngest children make hats out of newspaper, decorate them themselves, and then show off their creations to their parents in a ‘Grand Parade’. Teachers enter into the spirit of the occasion and create their own hats, as well as encouraging their charges …
Mar 11
Investing in women is the smart thing to do
With the celebrations and messages of International Women’s Day last week still reverberating, I thought I would devote this blog to reminding us why it is so important that we devote time, energy and resources to developing opportunities for women throughout the world. Justine Greening, the UK Government Secretary of State for International Development recently …
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 …
Feb 25
The Road of Lost Innocence: The True Story of a Cambodian Heroine
As I said to girls in Assembly last week, even when we are very busy, we must find time to read. Reading stretches the mind and fills the soul, and we are not complete human beings without it. This is true of books even when – perhaps especially when – they deal with subjects that …
Feb 18
Schools: places of amazing professional learning
Schools are at their essence about students – the student sits (or should sit) at the heart of all endeavour in the school; schools are there in order to educate students and to assist in guiding their personal development and growth. Schools were invented to ensure that young people were well-prepared to play a role …
Feb 11
Why it really matters that our athletes are free from drugs
Hot on the heels of Lance Armstrong’s confessions to doping, aired across the world, have come further revelations of drug taking at high levels of sport. Last week, the Australian Crime Commission released a report that effectively accused top level sportspeople (as yet unidentified) of taking drugs – and, to make the situation even worse …
Feb 04
Why every school should have a school song
In our first senior school Assembly of term last week, the very first thing we did was to sing the school song. This song refers to the history of Ascham (which was named after the tutor to the great Queen Elizabeth I, Roger Ascham), and then continues with these words: With heart and soul we …