plays; shared university preparation classes in some subjects (notably in my time English and economics) were working well, joint musical concerts had seen a renaissance and by the time I left in 2017, a shared sixth-form conference was in the making. Rowing was another obvious area for collaboration. All this provided excellent opportunities for the students of both schools, who could learn from each other. I would hear about ‘uni prep’ in my Friday morning break-time meetings with the head girl and her team:
‘How was uni prep this week?’
‘The boys are so, like, confident! They just come out with stuff.’
‘Actually I thought what Ben said was pretty rubbish …’
‘Didn’t you speak up and say you disagreed with him?’
‘Oh, Angus was already saying something else …’
‘True, he was talking a lot, but then when Sophie said that thing about the symbolism in the second text he obviously hadn’t actually read it …’
The girls in this group could work on their proactivity and risk-taking in debate which would serve them well at a university interview, and the boys could consider doing the reading thoroughly in advance rather than winging it. The best of both worlds, perhaps, but there was a tacit understanding that neither they nor we would want to compromise and lose our prized independence.
Passionate though I am about girls’ schools, necessary though I absolutely believe they are with the exhilarating experience they can give young women, it would be narrow-minded to say that all really good schools are single sex: excellence comes in many forms. When I look back at my time at Sha Tin College in Hong Kong, for example, where I taught English and Drama and had huge fun directing plays and setting up the first sixth form, Sha Tin was mixed, like most international schools, and I can’t say that the education of the girls was weakened by the presence of the boys. The students there were mostly resilient, well-travelled children used to their parents moving around the world and having to adapt to new schools and make new friends quickly. It was a school typical of its type: students and teachers on first-name terms, no uniform, with a breezy, energetic and entrepreneurial approach to life, much of which was lived outdoors. I remember the students there as open, confident and well balanced. Perhaps the more mature girls occasionally became frustrated with the horsing around some of the boys did in play rehearsals, and how, maddeningly, they didn’t learn their lines until the last minute, but there was much give and take. Since leaving headship and working now in the international schools world, I have seen many more examples of an empowering culture within mixed schools.
These schools thrive because, on the whole, they are populated by modern, mobile families with wide horizons, amongst whom it is not difficult to create pools of liberal and enlightened thinking. A number have been founded by talented and bold female entrepreneurs, which in my post-headship life as an adviser, it has been a wonderful privilege to get to know. But co-educational schools at large are not changing the game in society for the next generation of women. In order to do that, and to ensure that young women go out into the world ready and confident to take on the challenges and inequities they still face, the case for girls having the opportunity to be educated separately remains strong. Paulinas, in those same formative years, are laying down foundations of confidence about their intrinsic worth and ability which are not being modulated or diluted, however unconsciously, by marginalising or stereotyped attitudes to women and girls, by being photographed next to a boy who looks ahead as she looks at him, by attitudes so deep-seated and long-standing that they soundlessly permeate the very walls of the institution.
Taking a step back as an educator and looking at provision both nationally and internationally, I think the most important things of all are that there should be consistency of quality and diversity of choice for parents. No school deserves to continue just because it’s a girls’ school, if what it offers is not providing the best for the children. Schools that know what they are and what they do well, that are distinctive and coherent in their ethos and values, allow parents and children to make informed decisions for the future. That choice requires the schools to help by being very clear about what they are as well as what they are not, helping parents cut through any hearsay and mythology and see the school as clearly and truthfully as possible. As the October trees blew about on Brook Green, and with the elegant facade of the French school opposite becoming more visible as the brown leaves curled and fell, I would find myself looking out of the study window thinking through all this afresh, as I prepared to describe the culture of St Paul’s to prospective parents. It was autumn and therefore the season when parents would be spending their Saturdays doing the rounds of the London schools: the first stage of the eleven-plus entry process that would take their children to new senior schools the following September.
Open days were very important to us, not simply because we needed to set out our stall and make sure there were going to be sufficient applicants of the right calibre for the hundred-plus places we would offer after the entrance exam in January (contrary to popular myth, St Paul’s is by no means the most heavily oversubscribed school in London, perhaps partly as a result of its forbidding academic reputation) but also because with so much misinformation out there, we were on a mission to get the school properly understood.
Looking back, and perhaps ironically, I never felt it necessary to make a particular point about St Paul’s being a girls’ school. You surely felt the special power of confident but unparaded female capability the minute you stepped through the doors: the school in all its distinctive individuality largely spoke for itself, as all schools must do. At the same time I would try to explode some of the myths: we were not a hothouse where we were boiling up the girls to the highest temperature to pass exams – we were providing an exciting environment for learning, with teachers who were leaders in their field, still learning themselves; we were not negligent about the girls’ happiness and well-being but put that at the heart of their education by getting to know them as individuals, encouraging independence while at the same time building a sense of community and mutual responsibility. Whatever your prejudices, I told them, leave those at the door and look at the school with fresh eyes so that you can make up your own mind.
Naturally enough, the school spoke most powerfully not through messages delivered by me, or by the senior staff, however carefully composed and genuinely meant, but simply through the personalities of the girls themselves: articulate, enthusiastic, confident, authentic and bubbling over with pride to show the visitors their school. Being a girls’ school is simply one facet – albeit an important one – of the unique character of St Paul’s and that is expressed most tellingly and persuasively through the individuals that shape and are shaped by it. I believe in parents and their children having choice and here, for the right girl, was one distinctive and compelling one, spread out to be looked at, to taste and wonder at, and if the affinity was really there, of which to become a part.
So, when parents asked me, as they often did, to help them weigh up the pros and cons of single-sex versus co-ed for their daughter, as if there was a right answer, I would encourage them to think not in binary terms but about the particular ethos of each of the schools they were considering. For any parent, choosing a school for your child feels a momentous decision. And although there will be many aspects which can be rationally assessed – academic standards, provision for sport or the creative arts, location, single sex or co-ed, size of school – the most important consideration of all is what I would call alignment of values. To put it simply, will you feel comfortable leaving your child in the care of those people all day (or all term, or for five to seven years?). Are their values your values? Does it feel right? Better sometimes to set aside the rational considerations, stop overthinking it and just listen to that simple gut instinct about whether you and the school to which you are thinking of entrusting your child see the world in the same way.
All that said, and while I believe that excellent education comes in many forms, there is still a vital, contemporary role for girls’ schools. Caricaturing them
