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 also with moments of strong camaraderie and togetherness. So much happened; I could blog incessantly about my learnings and observations from the conference between now and Christmas, and still not cover everything.
So to start with, here are my key thoughts, emanating from a few days in the city of Bristol, where a group of around 200 Heads of independent girls’ schools met to share and learn:
- We still have a lot to do as a human race to make the world a better place. Kate Blewett showed us this when she talked about her incredible documentaries, including The Dying Rooms, as did Marie Staunton when she talked about the plight of girls around the world without an education.
- Positive progress towards good is being made. We are grasping hold of the positive power of internet technology, for instance, and working out how to protect our children from danger. Tanith Carey, Andre Baker and Claire Perry all spoke openly and frankly about the issues and the difficult path ahead, but because of their pioneering efforts, we are building a safer future.
- Heads of schools are together a powerful force; Heads with a shared, focused mission to ensure that girls and young women fulfil their potential and are ready to play their important roles in the world, are an even more powerful force. Moreover, they are not afraid to challenge prevailing stereotypes and political directions, as seen in their incisive questioning of Nick Gibb MP, Minister of State for Schools, and in their confrontation of Ralph Lucas’s impressions of girls’ schools.
- Society is beginning to wake up to the risk of a moral vacuum that has come about because we have often been afraid of taking a stand and providing a moral framework for young people and their parents. Schools have an enormous role in helping to create or put flesh on the bones of such a framework, and we cannot shirk this responsibility.
On this last point (on which I will elaborate further in my next blog), I realised a while ago that this is what drives me in my work and in my life. As leaders of young people and of adults, we have an enormous responsibility for the moral guidance of future generations, and we have to work both to prepare them and to change those aspects of society which make it near impossible for young people to be able to distinguish right from wrong. Positive progress is indeed being made … but we have a long way to go. Onwards …
