GCSE. I loved to watch the economical efficiency with which they would divide up a problem, assign tasks, get things done. And of course I watched them learning some of the lessons of leadership: the challenges of getting large groups to work together, the difficulty of fronting something your peers don’t necessarily like (‘Look, guys, we have to get to morning registration on time … okay? Just get over it’); the difference between the people who talk and those who get things done. It was with both sympathy and amusement I watched them one year plan their summer ball in liaison with the boys’ school prefect team, which obviously had more pressing things to think about:
‘How’s everything going with the ball?’
‘Well … We met with them [the boys] last week and they hadn’t really done anything since the previous meeting? They kind of just sat around wanting to know if they could bring their plus-ones … Why would we want girls from other schools at our ball? I mean … Then they were just arguing about the price. So we’re going to see some venues this weekend. Do they actually even care if this gets organised?’
Those girls were important role models for the younger students. In a girls’ school, there are also strong role models of female leadership amongst the staff. While there are of course female heads of mixed schools, and even of boys’ schools, male head teachers still predominate, especially in the private sector. In girls’ schools, girls learn that it’s normal for a woman to be in charge and that just as girls aren’t expected to prefer certain subjects, women don’t have to be the ones fulfilling the more traditionally pastoral or caring roles, underlining gender expectations about their skills and preferences. A woman can be pastoral deputy head but she can also be finance director – or indeed take on any other responsibility that interests her without it seeming unusual.
Importantly, it isn’t only girls who need to learn to accept and be at ease with the idea of female leadership – boys do too. Many of the boys growing up in today’s schools will find themselves working for female bosses; if this seems awkward to them, they will be at a disadvantage. The key at school level is for the staff to model relationships of genuine equality and unforced mutual respect. To that end, schools should try to ensure they do not have a predominantly single gender common room but one where roles of responsibility and leadership are held by both men and women. Boys’ schools might look to ensure that they have women in their senior leadership teams (and not only in pastoral posts, where they underscore the idea that women are best at looking after people) and girls’ schools should welcome employing capable men, including in those posts. I found it hugely beneficial and enriching in both the schools I led to have a mixed staff team, adding to the diversity of perspective and demonstrating to the girls that talented men had no difficulty in working with a female leader; to work in a girls’ school was to be a modern man, not to be emasculated and therefore commit career suicide. But perhaps the ultimate female role model was created when a much-admired and well-liked member of the senior leadership team at St Paul’s became the first woman in the 700-year history of Eton College to be appointed as its ‘lower master’, the most senior education post after the headship itself. This was an immensely proud and exciting moment for both schools – proof if it were needed that girls can indeed aspire to do anything.
A girls’ school then is where tomorrow’s women can really flex their capability, expand into all areas of potential interest and revel in learning for its own sake. They can unselfconsciously display their intelligence and curiosity, regardless of those powerful age-determined notions of popularity, attractiveness or peer pressure. Even super-confident Paulinas report that they don’t necessarily do this in a mixed group, where even bright girls can have a tendency to check themselves and to dumb themselves down, especially if hormones are coursing round the system and getting mixed up with the brainpower. Where girls are accustomed to being heard and being valued for who they are, irrespective of what they look like or what they wear (did we have to endure so many cartoons of Theresa May’s animal-print shoes?), they are encouraged in their capacities as confident individuals, leaders and agents of change.
Every school has its own personality which is only partly a matter of whether it educates boys, girls, or both. As the head of a girls’ school with a brother school just across the river, I had ample chance to think about the benefits and drawbacks of single-sex education in relation to two specific institutions. I came to know St Paul’s boys’ school in both a professional and personal capacity, because my son Adam was a pupil there, thriving on the academic stimulation and strong sense of tradition. As a mother I liked the proudly masculine ethos, in which personal responsibility and brotherliness were encouraged through the vertical tutor system, where boys of different ages were grouped together in a form. I saw my son grow in confidence, forging respectful and friendly relationships with his teachers, loving sport and then loving acting even more, learning to look up to older boys and look out for younger ones while building lasting friendships. The ‘Paulines’ I encountered hanging out in my kitchen were likeable, well-grounded young men who knew how to speak to adults in a natural way, neither gauche nor ingratiating. They teased each other mercilessly but were essentially kind and I saw that there was room for gentleness in this version of masculinity. The large school site, the generous rolling pitches (unusual to have so much green space in a London school) where rugby and cricket are passionately played and which lead down to the river, underline an expansive and confident sense of identity. Did I feel that my son was missing out because there were no girls in the school? No. True, he had a sister at home with all the independence of mind a mother could wish, but there was no sense to me – or to him – of something missing. He was busy, stimulated, committed: growing up in a healthy environment that was thoroughly positive and right for him.
The girls’ school I came to know quite differently, both more intimately and less objectively. I loved it as my home and my all-consuming project for eleven years. As you look at the school across Brook Green, it is a fine prospect. Gerald Horsley’s elegant main building of rose-coloured brick and white Portland stone is set off nowadays by elegant green and white landscaping behind the clipped hedges and curled ironwork. It has an orderly grace. As one of the first purpose-built schools for girls, this is where some of the most prominent intellectuals and thinkers of the twentieth century were schooled: former pupils, or Paulinas, as they are called (never Old Paulinas) include Rosalind Franklin, Kathleen Kenyon, Shirley Williams and Jessica Rawson, as well as those who have carved their original careers in other fields, such as actresses Celia Johnson and Rachel Weisz. Its smaller, compact and more urban site and buildings feel scholarly and focussed, the setting for a fierce sense of the pioneering spirit of women’s education, marked by a secular foundation, a commitment to liberal learning and a confident emphasis on independence of mind – the policy of having no uniform is matched by having remarkably few rules. All this can make some of the Paulinas, these latter-day bluestockings with their steady gaze, ripped jeans and dyed hair, somewhat daunting. Known for their quick intellect and an uncompromising mental tenacity, their reputation for asking awkward questions can make eminent speakers quite nervous while waiting in the wings to deliver a lecture. They are unconventional, individualistic and confident. As one of my son’s friends summed it up, while a sixth-former at the boys’ school: ‘We are just fairly normal guys, know what I mean? Your girls, well … they are just – you know – more out there …’ Yes, more out there perhaps, but also wonderfully warm, informal, friendly and completely unstuffy. That pungent, irrepressible sense of intellectual curiosity is all-pervasive while, as my predecessor Elizabeth Diggory beautifully put it, the classrooms and corridors ring with laughter.
Schools develop their particular character according to location, tradition, culture, the built environment, the pupils and, perhaps most of all, the cast of characters that make up the staff. So, here we have two very different schools, each with its own distinctive qualities. Would we really want to combine them and have just one, large, vanilla sundae? The lively balance between mutual respect and competition always seemed to me a good thing and in no way impeded the continuing conversation about how we might work more closely together. We all enjoyed doing so. Despite the unignorable and inconvenient geographical fact of the River Thames dividing us, necessitating a brisk thirty-minute
