Oct 30

Images of Bangladesh

It is the images of the children – and especially the girls – which will stay with me forever.

Those of you who have been following me on Twitter, or who read my blog last Sunday, will know that I have spent the past week in Bangladesh with the children’s charity Plan, on a trip organised by Plan UK to visit some of the many projects run by Plan in the country. In the course of the three days I spent there, I was able to see vocational training for girls in the slum of Dhaka, visit a factory where girls work after graduating from their training, visit a shelter home for girls, see in practice a rural early-years programme on the veranda of a tiny village dwelling, followed by an adolescent peer session exploring gender issues and the role of girls, attend a session enrolling my family’s (now) sponsored child into the Plan sponsorship programme, visit a village school (which included a discussion on how the village had become child marriage-free with the help of Plan), visit a Community Health Clinic, visit the homes of two girls who had been affected by child marriage, see a session of informal education for child domestic workers, and visit a school for urban school children which was essentially constructed of sheets of corrugated steel but whose children were amongst the most cheerful I have ever encountered.

This visit gave me a deep and moving insight into the lives of the poorest children in Bangladesh, and I will reflect on some of the issues to emerge over the next few days and weeks, in subsequent blogs. But, as I said at the start of this blog, it is the images of the children which will stay with me forever.

The girl in the shelter home for girls, herself only in her early teens, who was organising the younger girls and who, despite having nothing, and having experienced the most profound poverty and deprivation, walking miles each day to fetch rotten vegetables for her family, is determined to become a teacher and help others.

The calm and collected girl, far older than her years, who had been married at the age of 14, tortured by her husband and husband’s family, and only through the intervention of her own family, shaming her father-in-law at his place of work, had been able to escape, 2 years later.

The glimpse, as we sped past, of a naked toddler by the roadside, playing in her family’s makeshift but permanent dwelling, as her brother collected water from a pool and a monkey wandered past the area where her mother was cooking. What future will that child have?

The young girl who had the school council role of ‘Minister of Education’ at Lokmipur Primary School – articulate, forceful and not prepared to accept anything other than a quality school – and who made her point effectively to the village leaders and parents.

The child domestic worker aged 14, who has been working in a family in Dhaka since she was 10 – working 7 days a week, from 6am to 9pm, with only two hours a day free to attend a centre for education, and yet who is pleased to be receiving around £5 a month to help support her own family back in her village, and to save for the future.

All of these children – and more – I will revisit in my next few blogs. They share one thing in common: although they are so poor that it would take your breath away to think about what we have in comparison to what they have, they are positive and determined to improve not only their lot in life, but the lot of others. Plan is doing an amazing job, working with communities to help change attitudes to girls and women in particular, reducing the impact of poverty by demonstrating alternatives to, for example, child marriage.

We owe it to all these children and their families to support this work. Please do – www.plan-uk.org

Oct 23

Bangladesh calls – embarking on a trip to support Plan UK’s work with children

On Monday I am headed to Gatwick to join the tremendous chief executive of Plan UK, Marie Staunton, on a three day trip to Bangladesh (travelling out on Monday, with full days in Bangladesh on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and travelling back on Friday), to see in practice some of the work that Plan UK is doing with children in Dhaka and, further out from the capital, in Gazipur. At the beginning of this year, both at school and in my capacity of President of the Girls’ Schools Association, I adopted Plan UK as our international charity, but I never imagined at the time that I would have the opportunity to be able to see their work in action, and it is a huge honour and a privilege to be preparing to go out to see what they are doing on the ground.

Plan UK runs a powerful campaign ‘ Because I am a Girl ‘ which you should look up if you haven’t already come across it. 75 million girls in the world – 75 million! – are not in education, and their campaign seeks to do something about this. When girls and young women are educated, it has a demonstrable effect on their families, communities and nations, and those of us who are lucky enough to benefit from outstanding education systems have a responsibility to ensure access to school for those who do not. We all know what difference an education makes.

Part of what keeps girls out of education is a culture in which girls are married young, forced into early marriage, and Plan’s particular drive this year has been to end child marriage. ‘Take the Vow’ yourself; girls should be walking to school, not up the aisle. Bangladesh, unfortunately, is one of the top three countries in the world where child marriage is prevalent. Two thirds of girls are married before the legal age of 18 – a shocking figure – but work can be done to prevent this, by creating ‘child marriage free’ villages, and I will have the opportunity to understand how this has been achieved by listening to community representatives and local government representatives in Lakshmipur.

I will also be visiting a vocational training centre in Dhaka, a shelter home for girls, two schools and, I very much hope, the home of a child who my family and I will be sponsoring, and from whom we hope to learn. (It costs so little to sponsor a child and yet makes a huge difference to the child’s community, as the money is used to help the whole village – do look at this link.) There will be many people to meet, and so much to see and experience. Connections – and time! – permitting, I shall try to keep in touch over the week on Twitter (@drhelenwright); I shall certainly write about it on my return.

Reading my briefing notes on the projects I am due to visit, I am full of admiration for the work done by Plan UK. It makes me proud to be a human being, knowing how much we are doing to help others – the ‘good news’ stories that so often elude us. There is so much to be done, however, to help eliminate poverty and disease, and to provide opportunity for our fellow human beings. We all have such a lot to learn and gain from one another.

Oct 20

ParentPort: a way forward to protect our children

It was fantastic last week to see clear action being taken by the Government – as promised – to implement some of the major recommendations of the Bailey Report, ‘Letting Children be Children’, which was published in June. The report described a landscape in which our children are bombarded by sexualised imagery, and content designed to tempt them into commercialism, and it set out a range of measures both to prepare children to understand and resist these temptations, and to help protect children from inappropriate material.

Chief amongst these proposals – which included a service for new internet subscribers where they must actively ‘opt in’ if they wish to access adult content, new guidelines on what can be displayed on billboards near schools, and a new app to allow parents to choose the times of day their children can use their phones, and whether or not they can use the internet – was a new website, ParentPort, which gathers together in a single site the links needed to complain to advertisers or parts of the media responsible for material which parents (or others) find offensive or inappropriate for children. It is not perfect – it is far from the ‘single-click’ solution which is the ideal in our world today – but it is an enormous advance, and a hugely encouraging step in the right direction. There is a sense of purpose about it; in using it, you will have the sense that your concerns are being noted, and that someone is listening to you.

It should be noted that this kind of result – a new service for parents – does not happen by accident; it happens because people – concerned parents and citizens – are prepared to stand up and be counted, make their case to their MPs, and garner support for the issues. Pressure groups such as Safermedia have worked tirelessly to draw attention to the subject, and Claire Perry MP has made it a major focus of her work. The work is far from done, however – now that the means to complain about inappropriate images, films etc are in place, we must actually use them to ensure that pressure is placed on advertisers and programme makers to step back from the seemingly endless drive towards more and more sexualised imagery, and greater and greater commercialisation. Only by using them will our voice be heard; only by speaking out will change happen.

So – remember ParentPort. And when you next feel uncomfortable about something you are watching on TV with your child, log on and make yourself heard.

Oct 17

Why we need to keep up the pressure for women on Boards

It was good to read last week that David Cameron had written to the chief executives of the FTSE 100 companies to remind them of their obligation – recommended in Lord Davies’ report on Women in Boards published last February – to work out how they are going to aim for 25% female representation on their Boards by 2015. 58 of the FTSE 100 companies have published goals and plans, which still leaves a hefty proportion for whom we are still waiting; according to The Times, 14 FTSE 100 companies still have all-male boards, which means that their task is harder, so we await with interest how they are going to do this.

Lurking in the background, of course, is the spectre of quotas – imposed, legal quotas on the number of women that Boards must have in order to be allowed to function. Realistically, no-one wants quotas – Boards need the freedom to be able to appoint the very best people regardless of gender, men need not to feel that they may not have been appointed simply because they are men, and women need to be utterly secure that they were appointed because they were genuinely the best person for the job, if they are to avoid the risk of being undermined in boardroom politics.

Yet something needs to be done. Boards with women on them do better, as research from McKinsey shows; gender diversity makes a difference. And while we can understand that our social history cannot be reversed in an instant, it is clear too that there is some powerful resistance underlying the lack of women on boards in some quarters, which explains the anger and frustration of key women leaders revealed at a meeting last month attended by Janice Turner of The Times, which she reported in her column.

Boards need to grow up and wise up – recognise that there are some amazing women leaders out there, and find them. Even better, they should undertake to grow and nurture them. If this means opening minds to the advantages of flexible working practices and flexible career patterns as a way of making it possible for women and men to create the balance they need, this is no bad thing at all; it is a positive advance and embracing of the modern world. We live in a world where technology makes connecting with people and working around other commitments so much more possible than it ever was when bowler-hatted, briefcase-carrying, umbrella-wielding executives – invariably men – caught the 8.16 train to Waterloo every day.

It is time to move forward – and it shouldn’t stop with the FTSE 100.

Oct 14

Private schools with a public purpose

On Monday this week, St Mary’s Calne and the Girls’ Schools Association hosted a seminar in London to discuss the educational hot topic of our time: how independent schools can become more and more involved in the state sector, blurring boundaries which have grown up, and retuning, some would argue, to the original aims of private schools – to educate young people who would not otherwise be able to receive an education. Mr Bill Watkin of the Schools’ Network, which offers practical support to schools seeking to enter into partnership with state schools, was joined by the impressive Dr Elizabeth Sidwell, the Schools Commissioner, who spoke passionately about the urgency of helping under-performing state schools, so that no child would have his or her school years blighted by low aspirations and poor standards.

All the participants – Heads, Bursars and Governors – listened especially attentively, however, to our other speaker, Dr Albert Adams, former Head of Lick-Wilmerding School in San Francisco, and now an Advisor on Education, Leadership and Public Purpose. As the Head of Lick-Wilmerding, Al Adams spearheaded a vast number of initiatives in the local and national arena which had at their heart the concept of ‘public purpose’ despite – perhaps because of – being formed in and by private schools: summer school programmes, school-to-school partnerships, community service programmes, advisory work with struggling schools, professional development initiatives for teachers … the list was seemingly endless. Clearly, Dr Adams’ Governors were strongly supportive of the work that he did, even to the point of allocating 20% of his time to this project, but the benefits for the school, let alone the community, were manifold. His enthusiasm, however, was clearly the driver – he was passionate about his work, and this was palpable.

The messages of the afternoon were, in the end, simple: it is time to leave behind the antagonisms that have existed in our recent educational past between the private and public sectors, and to embrace the real value that independent schools bring to the UK educational scene. Schools need to play their part in this; so does our government and media. When this happens, it opens the door for independent schools to do what they are really good at – lead learning, both in their own schools and in partnership with other schools. We have immense talent in the independent sector – and, working with the outstanding elements of the state sector, we can really effect change.

The key, however, is reciprocity. This is not a case, as Dr Adams put it, of ‘noblesse oblige’; independent schools are not pretending to know all the answers and to impose them on others. Our independence is our strength, and we have evolved into powerful places of learning – an educational power which we can share, but which will grow still further through the act of sharing, as our staff develop a broader skill set and bring this expertise to a wider range of young people, who in turn can learn to understand and appreciate one another better. Successful programmes will always be mutually beneficial, and this was a core message of our meeting of minds.

These are exciting and interesting times in education – let us see where they take us.

Oct 11

Ed Smith, Cricket and Renaissance People

Last week I was in a blustery St Andrew’s for an excellent – bracing, even, in more ways than one! – annual meeting of the Headmasters and Headmistresses Conference. Led and organised by the new Chair of HMC, Ken Durham (Headmaster of University School, Hampstead), the conference took as its theme ‘Excellence, not Privilege’, and featured a number of stimulating speakers who approached this theme from a number of angles, recognising the excellence of the independent schools’ sector as they did so.

One of the speakers was Ed Smith, erstwhile independent schoolboy, England cricketer, writer and columnist for The Times, who spoke convincingly about his understanding, born of experience, that he came to be a better cricketer by not focusing solely on the game of cricket. Instead, he argued, he improved his cricket because he had a life beyond the sport – connected with cricket, of course, as he was passionate about it, and reflected in his writing especially, but employing a whole range of other skills, thoughts and experiences. Focused technical expertise, he argued, will only take you so far, and has in fact the potential to become twisted and counter-productive – we may have mocked the old-fashioned banker, but a dash of their hunches, coupled with greater time spent pondering over judgements, might just have saved us from the financial mess in which we find ourselves today. Much the same could be applied to politics – do we really trust ‘career’ politicians in the way that we trust people who have had a life before politics, and a more balanced understanding of the world as a result?

A very successful coach I know – and now award-winning author (Lynne Copp – follow her on Twitter at @DancingHandbags) – returned recently from the Women in Networking International Conference with a clear message that we all need to become ‘T-shaped’: broad and deep – a good broad understanding of business and a deep speciality. This was in effect what Ed Smith was saying, and both messages resonated with my instinct that in order to be successful and happy in life, it is not sufficient to be very, very good at only one aspect. We don’t have to be outstanding at everything we do, but we do need to be able to engage with the breadth and variety that life has to offer. This is exactly what Renaissance Man was all about. Updated for today, the concept of Renaissance People is a very attractive one.

Stretch yourself: start becoming a Renaissance Person today.

Oct 08

Queen Elizabeth I: a supporter of girls’ schools?

Toward the end of last month, in my capacity as President of the Girls’ Schools Association, I hosted a dinner for around 50 guests at the Honourable Society of Gray’s Inn in London. It was a super evening: present were Heads of a number of great girls’ schools, and Heads of a number of great prep schools, together with some invited guests. Professor A C Grayling spoke inspiringly about the landscape of Higher Education and what universities should be doing for their charges, and he had a receptive audience when he spoke about excellence and aspiration, coupled with the need to direct young people to enable them to focus on the future, not simply drift into the world of work.

When it came to the Royal Toast – a Gray’s Inn tradition – I drew attention to the portrait of Queen Elizabeth I, which hangs in the Dining Hall beneath our dining room. Up to the age of 11, Elizabeth shared the tutors of her half-brother Edward, but she was a bright girl with an appetite for learning, and in 1544, when she was 11, she had appointed to her a personal tutor, William Grindal. By this time she could write English, Latin, and Italian, but under the talented and skilful Grindal she also progressed in French and Greek, and is reputed to have spoken Cornish. After Grindal sadly died of the plague in 1548, Elizabeth continued her education under Roger Ascham, a teacher who believed that learning should be active, engaging and a positive experience, and after whom the great girls’ school in Sydney, Ascham, is named. Roger Ascham wrote a treatise on educational method, The Scholemaster, which was published posthumously in 1570, and he was generally credited with directing the young Elizabeth to an extremely high level in her studies.

By the time her formal education ended in 1550, Elizabeth was the best educated woman of her generation, and undoubtedly an advocate of education for its own sake. As I said to the accumulated body of Heads at my President’s dinner, I think it is not too far a step from this to imagine that Queen Elizabeth I would have been an enthusiastic advocate of education for girls in the 21st century, and for girls’ schools in general, had she been alive now. How wonderful to have royal approval!

A study of history is a marvellous thing …

Oct 06

What a world-class education really means

One of the other speakers I very much enjoyed listening to at the IAPS conference (see my blog on Sunday) was a teacher from Windlesham House School in West Sussex, a prep school teaching girls and boys up to the age of 13. He was speaking about the partnership that Windlesham has with The CRED Foundation, which enables the school to take trips abroad, to developing countries, on expeditions which are mutually transformative, and the pictures he showed and the stories he told were captivating.

Through CRED, groups of boys and girls from Windlesham have been out to help in projects in Africa and now India – visits which by all accounts have changed the lives of the participants quite profoundly. To see poverty up close, and to do something to help put it right – this was the opportunity that these young citizens had, and they grasped it with both hands. Whether it was by teaching, or by playing games, or simply by connecting and building relationships, the visitors were able not only to gain an insight into the issues facing the whole of humanity, but also to seek to do something about them.

This was a fabulous opportunity, and it made me reflect on the purpose of the education to which we devote our time in schools. Independent schools in the UK – all independent schools, not just prep schools – set their sights extremely high in all that they do, and nowhere is this more obvious than in the aims that we set ourselves to ensure that the education we offer to our students is absolutely excellent – world-class, in fact. A world-class education must be worthy of the name, and cannot be restricted to the development of the individual alone, although this is an important part of it; rather, it must allow for the growth of the individual into a social, socially-aware, socially-responsible, human being who understands and is sensitive to the needs of the wider, global community, and who is prepared to make a difference.

I feel this incredibly strongly in my role as an educator; hearing the stories of 12 year olds last week, and the change these experiences have wrought in their lives, inspired me yet further. We should all be seeking to change the world for the better. If you haven’t started yet, it is never too late to begin.

Oct 04

“Women earn more than men”: should we be excited?

An article in yesterday’s Independent by Richard Garner, the Education Editor, drew attention to the content of this year’s Elizabeth Johnson Memorial Lecture at the Institute of Physics. Betty Johnson, who died in 2003, was a great supporter of women in the sciences, and in her honour, this lecture this year was given by Mary Curnock Cook, the chief executive of UCAS, the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service. She spoke in part about figures published by the UK Office of National Statistics, in their Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, which revealed how women of a certain age group (22-29) have started to earn more than men, and it was this figure that made the headlines. Is it indeed proof that the gender pay gap is closing, or even that women’s qualifications are translating into better-paid jobs in the workplace?

Delving further into the statistics shows us that the news isn’t perhaps as positive – or, indeed, in an age where we are used to seeing stories of a persistent pay gap, as unusual – as the headline in the Independent suggested. For a start, the difference is very slight – a difference of a few pence an hour, hovering around the £10 an hour mark. Besides, this pay difference is restricted to this particular age group of 22 to 29 (and given that the average age to have a first baby in the UK is now 29, this may be a significant cut-off point). Overall, the picture is not so rosy either – while junior women managers now earn £21,969 on average, ie £602 more than men at the same level, female managers in general are paid on average £31,895 per year, which does not compare nearly as well with the £42,441 that men are paid on average for doing the same job. It is no surprise, then, that while the mean net graduate premium – the amount by which lifetime pay is boosted through degree level qualifications – is £108,000, this splits into an unequal £121,000 for men and only £82,000 for women.

Still, we should not be too pessimistic – any signs that men’s and women’s pay is growing closer together are encouraging as we strive to move our society towards a situation in which gender inequality is not even an issue. This is not about women seeking to be superior to men, nor is it even about particular women always seeking to be paid the same as particular men (although to be fair, if they are doing the same job, then they should be!). Statistics are a crude measure and do not discriminate between individuals of different characters, aptitudes, experiences and suitability for any particular job; they are a fair indicator, though, of trends, and one trend we would need to see in order to ‘park’ the whole issue of gender inequality would be precisely the sort of trend to which Mary Curnock Cook was drawing attention. In the meantime, it seems sensible to continue setting the kind of target, however aspirational, which Lord Davies broadly recommends in his report for the number of senior women on boards. Unless we set ourselves goals, we will not get to where we should be in this respect.

So in the light of this news, let us all – in equal (no pun intended) measure – celebrate, be cautious, and determine to make sure that the issue does not yet fade from our consciousness.

Oct 02

How a hijack revealed the immense power of humanity

One of the privileges of being President of the Girls’ Schools Association is being invited to the annual conferences of the other UK Heads’ Associations, and last week I was a guest at the IAPS conference of Prep School Heads, which this year was held in Birmingham. It was a super conference with a stimulating theme of ‘Torch Bearers – Key Relationships in Shaping Society’, and it was great to be able to spend three days talking and thinking about the relationships we foster in our schools, which is one of the amazing strengths of the independent schools’ sector.

The speakers were inspirational, and one particularly inspirational – and moving – speaker was Mike Thexton, who told the story of how he was involved in the hijacking of Pan Am flight 073 in Karachi in 1986. He has written a book about the incident ‘ What happened to the hippy man? ‘ which refers to his rather unkempt appearance at the time (he was returning from a climbing expedition to honour his brother, who had died in the Himalayas, climbing without oxygen). In the early stages of the hijack, one passenger was shot, and Mike was chosen as the next man to die. He spent hours kneeling at the front of the plane, by the door, waiting to be shot, until he was eventually sent back to his seat. The ordeal did not end particularly well – 20 people were shot in a mass shooting by the hijackers – but Mike managed to escape, and live.

He spoke in a very matter-of-fact way about the incident, and had us captivated, holding our breath in shock and awe. It was a powerful presentation. Two points in his narration were particularly powerful, though. He told the story of the air hostess who, when told to collect in the passports of the passengers for the hijackers to select their victims, demonstrated incredible courage in ‘losing’ the passports of the white Americans who were on the flight – judging, rightly, that they would otherwise be the first to die. It struck home – I remembered the story of bravery and resilience in another hijacking experienced b a dear friend of mine, which you can read about on her website.

He also told his own story – of how, at the front of the plane, a bullet away from death, he not only said goodbye in his head to all his family and those dear to him, but he decided that he did not want to die angry, and that he would forgive the hijackers. He did, and he found an amazing peace and calm.

The strength that comes from going beyond the everyday, from rising above concerns with the self, and taking a bold, brave leap into concern for others, even in the face of tremendous adversity, is phenomenal. Terror may be an extraordinarily disempowering, imprisoning force – but we break free when we decide, consciously, that we are greater than the bodies in which we inhabit our lives – we are part of this amazing body of humanity.

To be courageous and to forgive – two choices which we can all make.