Schools profile Education
can be yourself. You can play Hamlet. You can be you – and that is immensely powerful in those formative years when you are setting yourself up for the future. It can be incredibly grounding.” In a single-sex environment, girls are
far more likely to take risks – from the awkward teenager who feels shy about putting up her hand in class, to the go- getting extrovert who desperately wants to play the lead in the school musical.” Feeling comfortable about taking risks is one of the ingredients that makes girls schools successful,” says Debbie Leonard. She recalls a recent gymnastics and dance display at her school in which 400 girls “of all shapes and sizes and ability levels” joined in. “It was great fun, but you couldn’t have created that kind of atmosphere with the distraction of boys and girls being worried about how they looked.” Mary Pat Larman says this was one of the reasons why she chose to send her daughter Bridget to Croydon High School. “Girls are encouraged to pursue every subject area and there is no stereotype that science is a boys’ subject or anything like that. It is just normal to see girls choosing maths or chemistry, just as it would be to see them choosing a language or social sciences.” Tis attitude is part of the culture that
we’ve only started valuing women’s education in the last 100 years and we have had the vote for less than that
girls’ schools work hard to create and maintain, says Helen Fraser. She points out that psychological differences between girls and boys mean they approach learning very differently with girls preferring to work more thoroughly while boys just want to race through everything returning to revise at a later date. Differences in the way boys and girls respond to feedback also has implications for teaching and learning styles. “When a girl gets a bad mark, she is much more likely to say it is because she is hopeless at maths,” says Fraser. “A boy is more likely to blame it on the teacher.” In
www.firstelevenmagazine.co.uk
a society,
As
a single-sex school, teachers can tailor their practice much more closely to the needs of their students. “Girls are more risk averse than boys, and they need help building up their confidence. Without boys around, girls are less inclined to think ‘if I put my hand up and say this, will I look silly?’” As well as giving girls confidence, being educated in an all-girls’ environment helps develop resilience, says Helen Wright. “We’ve only started valuing women’s education in the last 100 years and we have had the vote for less than that. Tere are a lot of pressures on women in terms of appearance, what your role is as a woman in society and whether you should work once you become a mother. We are still in the process of evolution as a society, and women do still face hurdles, so we need them to be as resilient as possible.” Debbie Leonard agrees, adding that the best gift girls can have is confidence and a can-do attitude. “We know there are still barriers out there but we tell our girls that someone has to be first. And if they fall at the first hurdle, we encourage them to get back up and try again. It’s this that gives them the confidence to go into leadership and not be frightened of it.” And in single-sex schools, there are many opportunities for girls to take the lead. “Tey are the ones who represent the school in sport, read out the match reports and who compete in the debating team,” says Larman. “Tey are expected to lead, so they step up to the plate.” But it is a difficult time to be a teenager. Te rise in celebrity culture has created unrealistic role
models for girls, many of whom now feel under pressure to be the
prettiest, the cleverest and most accomplished in their
friendship group. Earlier this year,
the GSA published a book, Your Daughter: a Guide to Raising Girls, which contains advice from heads of independent schools on a range of topics such as eating disorders, teenage tantrums and tattoos. But are issues like eating disorders and body image issues more common in all-girl environments? Apparently not, says Nicky Hutchinson, co-author of Body Image In Te Primary School (Routledge). “In an age of Facebook accounts and mobile phones, children are forever changing their image on social networking sites. Computer games show various stereotypes: scantily clad women and masculinised aggressive men. Tese messages are being picked up by children regardless of whether they go to a single-sex school or not.”
Summer 2011 FirstEleven 25
Left Most girls’ schools have strong pastoral systems Below Girls’ only education tends to extend childhood for longer
✎
PHOTOS: COURTESY OF CHELTENHAM LADIES’ COLLEGE
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84