Nov 30

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 need to be mindful of the opportunities they are given to help influence others and make a difference, and it was as a direct result of this that – after discussion in school – I decided that we would adopt two charities both as our school charities for the next few years, and as our GSA charities. Both charities were to be focused on the education of girls and young women, as this was the uniting factor, connecting the work we do in our girls’ schools with the work of the charities themselves. One charity would have an international focus – and we chose the fantastic children’s charity, Plan, with whom I travelled to Bangladesh recently; I wanted the other charity to have a very local focus, pertinent to my school, and we chose The Prince’s Trust (South West).

Over a million – 1 in 5 – young people in the UK are not in education, employment or training, so the need for the Prince’s Trust programmes is large, and in choosing the Trust as our local charity, we were very specific about what we wanted the money we raised to go towards: it needed, obviously, to benefit local people, and we wanted the money to go specifically to women, in keeping with our aims and objectives as a school and an Association. We settled, therefore, on the Trust’s Enterprise programme, which provides small grants (and training) to help young people – more women than men, in fact – to set up in business in the south west.

Until last Monday – the first main conference dinner of the Girls’ Schools Association Conference in Bristol – I doubt that I would have shifted from this perspective, but following on from the testimony of a Young Ambassador for the Prince’s Trust who came to speak to us after dinner, I would happily let the Trust use any money they receive for whatever purposes they deem fit (as long as it benefited women, of course!). This is all down to Ashleigh, the Young Ambassador, who told us her story. Bullied at school for being tall, and with a difficult home life, she was introduced to the Prince’s Trust and followed their Team programme, which developed in her a resilience which she had simply not had the opportunity to develop up to that point.

She described – in a very matter-of-fact but very moving way – how she had liked school, but had been unable to learn partly because of the bullying she experienced and partly because she just hadn’t been shown – ever – how to separate out her emotions so that they did not paralyse her when things weren’t going right in her personal life. She had clearly gained an immeasurably huge amount from her experience with the Prince’s Trust – not just confidence, but robustness, ambition and the ability to work and organise her life. She has a job and has plans to study fashion design – what a success! If her impressive feather earrings were anything to go by, she will make an impact before long on that world.

We handed over a cheque for £5k on the evening, following on from a cheque earlier in the term for £4.5k, and we ran a prize draw on the evening which raised several hundred more pounds. More is planned. All of this will help young people like Ashleigh. As for Ashleigh herself, she said after the diner and her speech that she was so inspired by what she had seen and experienced in her time with us that she was off to design even more. Do watch this space!

Nov 24

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 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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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 …

Nov 19

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 a very interesting three days of talks and meetings ahead of us, in the city of Bristol. The Heads of around 200 girls’ schools in the UK will be attending, with some international visitors and other supporters of the GSA; it is always a great opportunity to take time away from school in order to become refreshed and re-focused, and it is an opportunity too to draw courage from others and to feel part of a wider movement dedicated to the education of girls and young women.

This year, the theme of our conference is ‘Making a World of Difference’. More than ever these past 11 months, as I have been drawn into the work of the Girls’ Schools Association, engaging in the national educational debate and issues surrounding education such as parenting, the work-life balance debate and working mothers, I have been struck by what a small world it is in which we live. The nature of technology and its speed means we are more able than ever before to communicate quickly and effectively but it has also been brought home to me just how many of the same issues and concerns seem to be at the heart of societies around the world.

We will welcome to Bristol many speakers, who are leaders in their chosen field, who will inspire us, challenge us and speak to us about many of the practical issues facing the independent schools’ sector. Nick Gibb, Minister of State for Schools, is speaking on Tuesday, and we are joined on Monday by Jean Gross, the Government’s Communications Champion, along with Claire Perry MP, the writer and journalist Tanith Carey, the award-winning film-maker Kate Blewett, and many others. Ralph Lucas from the Good Schools Guide and Annabel Heseltine from First Eleven are speaking on Wednesday, as are successful businesswomen from everywoman, and Marie Staunton, the CEO of Plan UK. The programme is bursting with fascinating speakers and interesting events, including a service at St Mary Redcliffe and a reception on board ss Great Britain, and I am looking forward to three days which will leave us all refreshed and reinvigorated before we return to our schools on Wednesday and head towards the last section of this long and busy Autumn Term.

It has been a real privilege to serve the GSA as President this year. I feel more than ever before that we are all stronger as schools from being part of such a powerful network, celebrating girls’ schools, which provides us with cohesion and unity while respecting the rights of each individual school to be different and unique. I shall enjoy marking this during this coming week.

Nov 17

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, and the perils are not to be dismissed lightly; barely a week goes by without the media reporting a traumatic story of online bullying, some of which have ended tragically in teenage suicide. Last week’s survey reporting that a third of teenagers have been affected by cyber-bullying was accompanied by the story of Natalie Farzaneh, a teenager from York, whose experiences at the hands of bullies online led her to self-harm and to consider taking her own life.

Natalie managed to turn her life around, and is now a motivational speaker, speaking out against bullies on the internet; her mission, as is ours in schools, is to educate young people about the harm that they can do online, and how they can protect themselves and others. This is an incredibly important message … but it is not the only message about online social activity, and sometimes we risk losing the positive amongst the warnings. I have been very struck recently by the positive effects of social media, used wisely, and we need to remember this too.

When I went to Bangladesh last month with Plan UK, I felt that I had an obligation to share what I saw and experienced with the wider world, and social media was the most obvious platform. I blogged in advance (and afterwards), I tweeted regularly, and I posted to Facebook. The effects were remarkable; since returning, I have been overwhelmed by the number of people who have said that they followed my story with interest, and really felt as though they connected with what I was living during my journey. Posts I made were retweeted and shared, and have appeared on a number of other websites, including the Gabbitas website. One mother explained that she had been reading out one of my posts when her 6 year old overheard it, and it prompted a deep and important discussion on child domestic workers. A university friend messaged me while I was there, asking about the purchasing power of the taka, so he could understand better what I was describing. Someone else has applied for a job at Plan UK as a direct result of reading my blog.

We need to be reminded from time to time of the power of the internet to connect and to do good in the world. Perhaps if we speak out strongly and honestly about the good and bad facets of the online world, then we will maximise the former and minimise the latter. The world needs us to build positive relationships; let us put our energies into ensuring that we do.

Nov 14

A terrifying experience at Tate Britain

It is not often that I am terrified by a work of art, but this would not be too strong a description of what happened to me last Friday. I was in London for a lunch time meeting connected with the Girls’ Schools Association, and because I was slightly early, I popped into Tate Britain to explore the exhibits and indulge my curiosity. I don’t always ‘get’ modern art, but I am always open to new experiences, and I thought that perusing works that were acknowledged as great would be a better use of a spare 30 minutes than simply checking my BlackBerry.

I wandered through the galleries, opened my mind, and stretched my understanding – always a good way to refresh the soul – until I came to a nondescript plywood door, with an attendant outside and a board indicating that this too was an exhibit: Mike Nelson’s ‘The Coral Reef’. I had to check that it was all right to enter; when given permission by the benevolent attendant, who must experience such uncertainty on the part of visitors every day, I stepped bravely but cautiously through the door … and embarked on a real journey.

If you have read about this installation, or visited it, then you will know exactly what I saw – small, tawdry rooms with doors which creaked and led to other chambers and corridors – or which led nowhere at all. The installation is entirely enclosed, and there is no map, so there is no sense of where you are headed. Dim lights, 1950’s sofas and shocking artefacts such a clown’s mask build an impression – a very real impression – of a disturbing world which, even if not post-apocalyptic, is a world of unforgiving menace. At one point I became totally, frighteningly, disorientated, arriving in a room which was an exact replica of the first room I had entered – but with no way out. When I found my way back to the entrance, I jumped to see again the benevolent attendant – who must experience this too from visitors every day – and my experience of relief at emerging from a labyrinth of ‘lost souls’, as it is described, was palpable.

The Coral Reef is an exceptional piece of art; it had a physical, emotional and psychological impact on me and the images remain seared in my mind. If you want to hear Mike Nelson talking about his work, look at this section of the Tate Britain website. This was a piece of modern art which I totally ‘got’.

Nov 12

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 have developed; in fact, it is only by doing so that they can truly experience the world and live life to the full. I say too, frequently, that this is a global world which they inhabit, and that they should be prepared to live, work, study and travel far and wide in order to be able to appreciate what this magnificent world of ours is, and to develop an understanding of humanity which will help them to make a positive change for the better in their own lives and in the lives of others.

And so … I am practising what I preach and have heard the call to move with my family to Australia in January 2013 – just over a year from now – to become the Head of Australia’s leading girls’ school, Ascham School in Sydney. It is a great school, with a long tradition of excellence in the education of young women, and I feel privileged to be able to continue this tradition and help prepare girls for the challenges of the future that awaits them. I am glad to be bringing an international dimension, and I am glad to be faced with new challenges of my own – a wonderful new culture, a different school system, a new national curriculum … to name but a few. It is a great honour to be selected for this post, and I shall enjoy immensely getting to know and lead the community.

I shall miss my current school, St Mary’s Calne, tremendously, and I am so proud of what I have achieved over the past decade. The school is riding high in every respect – it is a strong, focused, deeply happy and intensely warm school, and the outstanding teams of staff, overseen by a superb Board of Governors, will make the transition to another Headmistress an easy and seamless one. I shall miss the girls, the staff and the parents, but the time has come to leave behind what I see as the best school in the UK. I shall never forget what we have experienced together, and I have no intention of losing contact. An email sent from the UK to Australia takes a few seconds to arrive, and you can travel from any one point in this world to somewhere else and arrive within 24 hours. The world is smaller than it has ever been. Besides, though, we still have over a year together, and there is much to be done in this time!

This next phase of my life – and of my family’s life – is about building upon what I (and we) have learned to this point, not about leaving it behind. There is too much to do in respect of the education of young people, and of girls in particular, and I feel incredibly highly motivated to make this work across the globe. My recent trip to Bangladesh (see previous blogs) brought home to me with a power that almost took my breath away how important it is for all of us in the developed world – from Europe to the US to Australasia, drawing in all developed countries en route – to reach out beyond our boundaries to help make this world a fairer place, and this often starts with the education of girls and women. Every girl I help to educate – be it in the UK or in Australia – has the potential to help make the difference in the world that the world so needs, and it is an enormous privilege to help make this happen.

As I am fond of saying, and as the girls at St Mary’s Calne have adopted on my behalf as a school motto … onwards and upwards! Watch this space.

Nov 11

Remembering the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month …

Today – Remembrance Day – people across the globe will pause for reflection at 11am on 11.11.11 – a poignant combination of figures on a poignant day. Every year in our school assembly around this time I talk about remembrance, and I firmly believe that it is quite right to do so – we should never forget the people who gave their lives so that the lives of others might be better, nor should we forget that it is up to all of us to ensure that war, fighting, and terror disappear from our world.

And we will best remember this when we remember the consequences of war – of the millions killed and injured, and those whose lives have been devastated as a result. In helping us to do this, the work of one organisation is key: an organisation which seeks to keep these memories alive, lest we forget -the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Today, the Commission takes care of the graves and memorials of 1.7 million men and women from across the Commonwealth who died in the two World Wars. In all there was a total of 1,146,918 burials. Picture these graves laid end-to-end: the line would be about 2,300 kms long – a horrific number, but it does give us a better idea of the enormous task that the Commonwealth War Graves Commission carried out then, and continues today.

It all began when, at the beginning of the First World War, a man called Fabian Ware, too old to serve in the army, arrived in France in September 1914 to lead a mobile unit of the British Red Cross. He very soon noticed that there was no one in charge of marking and recording the graves of those killed. He understood how distressing this was both for relatives at home and for those still fighting, to think that lives had been sacrificed and then the bodies just left to rot in some anonymous field and he decided to make sure this was not allowed to happen. In order to comfort relatives, the newly founded Commission quickly completed some experimental cemeteries, using the best architects and garden designers to make the places ‘less miserable and unsightly.’ At Rouen, the writer Rudyard Kipling (who himself had a long association with the Commission) described ‘the extraordinary beauty of the cemetery and the great care that the attendants had taken of it, and the almost heartbroken thankfulness of the relatives of the dead who were buried there.’

Today, there are Commonwealth graves and memorials in 148 countries across the world. It is always hard to imagine numbers on this scale when we talk about the dead of the two world wars – and these are only the people who died. Still more difficult to imagine are the numbers of parents, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, aunts and uncles, the girlfriends, the boyfriends and the neighbours left behind to pick up the pieces of their own lives after suffering the loss of someone they loved.

War is devastating. As the number of survivors of the World Wars gradually fades, it is up to us all, each one of us, to remember this.

There will be no peace

till attitudes change;

till self-interest is seen as part of common interest;

till old wrongs, old scores, old mistakes are deleted from the account;

till the aim becomes co-operation and mutual benefit rather than revenge or seizing maximum personal or group gain;

till justice and equality before the law become the basis of government;

till basic freedoms exist;

till leaders – political, religious, educational – wholeheartedly embrace the concepts of justice, equality, freedom, tolerance, and reconciliation as a basis for renewal;

till parents teach their children new ways to think about people.

There will be no peace: till enemies become fellow human beings.

Nov 09

More reflections on Bangladesh: Child Domestic Workers in Dhaka

When I see my Year 7 girls at school, aged 11 and 12, go past me into Assembly each morning, I am struck forcefully by the contrast with their counterparts at the centre for child domestic workers in Dhaka which I visited with Plan UK during my visit to Bangladesh two weeks ago. This centre was in effect the entrance hall to an apartment block; it had been donated by the owner for the use of one of Plan’s 20 learning centres for 20 of the 400 child domestic workers that they manage to reach through the project, and in it, the children come for 2 hours a day, 5 days a week, to experience some non-formal educations, some recreation and some counselling, as well as job skill training and awareness raising of personal safety.

It seemed to me that the centre was in effect a lifeline to these child domestic workers, who otherwise had no contact with others, and who worked in the home up to 16-18 hours a day, 7 days a week. One girl (a 14 year old who had been working since she was 10) described her work looking after her employer’s baby and doing the cleaning; she sleeps on the floor of the drying room and gets up at 6am every morning, for which she was paid around 600 taka a month (£1 = approximately 120 taka, so she was paid the equivalent of £5 a month). She was fed and housed, but she – and the other girls in the centre, who were enjoying drawing pictures of their fantasies (trees and villages) – were tiny; no-one in this group was over-fed, for certain.

It is astonishing that in the world today society tolerates the deprivation to which these children – these girls, for they were all girls – are subjected. These children have no support structures – no healthcare, no education – and are placed in what is in effect servitude. Of course, as I had come to realise, the underlying reason was poverty, as their families could not afford to feed them … but this does not make it in any way better, and simply calls on us (who are so much better provided for) to do something about it. Besides, there is a gender imbalance to be redressed; although there is near gender parity of children in primary school in Bangladesh now, the number of girls in education drops rapidly further up the school in socio-economically deprived areas.

So Plan is doing something about it, creating these centres which are full of hope and purpose, preparing the girls for a life beyond servitude. What does the girl I met want to do? Her family is saving a tiny amount each month from her wages and she intends to open a shop in a few years’ time. Her goal is to become ‘self-dependent’. And I really, really hope that she does; she deserves that future.

Nov 06

The fabulousness of girls’ schools!

I have just returned from the Independent Schools’ Show in Battersea, London, where I was speaking in the morning on the subject of ‘The benefits of single-sex education’. In the afternoon, I was on a ‘MyDaughter’ panel of Heads of girls’ schools, chaired by Sarah Ebner of Schoolgate, so I had a double dose of single-sex education, and a thoroughly enjoyable day focusing on what it is about our single-sex girls’ schools that make them so great.

It is a question that I am often asked ‘ why single-sex girls? ‘ and I tend to respond from a very personal perspective. My journey in senior school teaching in the independent schools’ sector in the UK began with an all boys’ school, and I moved from there into a co-educational school because I wanted to be more involved with girls and their development. By the time of my second co-educational school, however, and especially because I was at the time studying part-time for an MA in Applied Linguistics which sensitised me to language and gender issues, I began to feel that girls deserved something more, and as a result I moved into my first girls’ school.

What a revelation! Here was a place where girls could do anything to which they set their minds, where pressures of gender stereotypes were absent, and where girls could just be themselves – relaxed, natural girls and young women. Here there was a space – a real gift of space – for girls to learn who they were, learn to like themselves, and learn that life holds an infinite possibility for them.

Now in my second girls’ school – and fast approaching the end of a glorious decade of my life here – I understand even better, and am yet more passionate about, the effect that girls’ schools have on the girls who join them. They are amazing places, full of energy, joy and a refreshing normality that is at odds with an outdated image that prevails in the tabloid press. ‘Relaxed and purposeful’ is a phrase I often use to describe my own school, and I see this reflected in many excellent girls’ schools. In a great girls’ school, a girl learns how to be.

And we must not underestimate too the importance of girls’ schools in helping us to address our social history and to change, gently but firmly, the imbalances of the past whose residues linger in so many parts of our society. Girls’ schools teach girls that they can be anything that they want to be – so long as they are responsible citizens; they empower them; they give them the opportunity to discuss issues which can vex our current generations of young women, such as working motherhood; and they teach them how to push boundaries and make choices that are right for them, for their families and for their wider communities.

And the proof of their success? Just look at the young women when they graduate from their girls’ schools: grounded, comfortable in themselves and making the most of their lives. What more as parents could we ask for our daughters? Girls’ schools are – quite simply – fabulous!

What a marvellous day I have had, reminding myself of this!

Nov 01

What child marriage really means, and why we should do something about it

Before I travelled to Bangladesh, I knew that child marriage had been identified as a key issue in the country. According to UNICEF’s 2011 State of the World’s Children report, about a third of women in Bangladesh aged 20-24 are married by the age of 15, and 66% of girls will wed before their 18th birthday. This is a shockingly high figure, placing Bangladesh in the top three countries for child marriage in the world.

What I had not really appreciated, however, were the stories behind the statistics. I had not really understood, until I met the families and the girls affected, just how embedded child marriage is in Bangladesh, not because this is somehow an ancient cultural tradition, to be respected and venerated, but because – quite simply – poverty means that there is often no other way for families to be able to feed their daughters. If you couldn’t afford the basic food necessary for survival, and you saw a way out for your daughter, so that someone else could feed and house her, you might feel impelled take that route too, even if you knew that by doing so you were likely to be subjecting her to hardship and even cruelty, and placing her in danger of death and complications in child-bearing.

Child marriage is, of course, wholly wrong. A girl who is married at, say, 14, effectively ends her childhood. She is removed from her friends and her education ceases. Stories of abuse – not just of domestic drudgery, but real abuse – are commonplace. If she has children, she is twice as likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth than if she was able to wait until her twenties – and maternal death is 25 times more likely in Bangladesh than in the UK, so the danger is very real.

The impact is hard to deny when you meet the girls who have been affected by child marriage – not just the girls who have been married and who have escaped, but those who managed to avoid child marriage, but at a huge emotional cost to themselves. One particularly harrowing encounter I witnessed was with a girl who had discovered at the age of 15 that she was about to be married, but who had fought against her mother, her relatives, and the leaders of the village, all of whom had pressured her to marry. Five years later, the recollection of this time brought back raw and painful memories, both for her and for her mother, who had also clearly been scarred by the events. It is the powerlessness that poverty brings that leads parents to do this to their daughters, and it is poverty that we must fight, alongside the attitudes that lead people to think that child marriage is an acceptable solution.

Plan is doing something about this, and it is clearly part of the national conversation – in the three days I spent in Bangladesh, I found a number of references in the daily newspapers to the need to reduce and eliminate child marriage. So far, Plan has helped 87 villages declare themselves genuinely ‘child marriage free’, and to look towards education and vocational training as a way forward for their daughters instead, to help support themselves and their families.

Plan UK have released a comprehensive briefing on child marriage, presented to the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting which has been taking place in Perth, Australia, and you can read it here. It explores in detail the reasons for child marriage across the world, and sets out clearly and unequivocally what Commonwealth leaders can do to end it. Do read it – and do your bit to help lobby our government and others to put an end to child marriage – not just in Bangladesh, but throughout the world.