St Swithun's Winchester

It is well-meaning, but ultimately unhelpful in my opinion to suggest that a return to a single terminal exam at GCSE will disadvantage girls because they allegedly lack the confidence to perform well when the stakes are high. To lump together all girls as timid creatures is to do all children a disservice as it perpetuates unhelpful stereotypes about girls and boys.

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I found myself irritated by this year’s International Women’s Day. Not by the day itself, but by the fact that we still need one. I want to bang men’s (and sometimes women’s) heads together when I read about so many persistent inequalities. It is both astonishing and appalling that 40 years after equal pay legislation women are still not paid the same as men for the same job.

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Call me naïve if you will, but I find it dull and unimaginative to see the media heading once again around the buoy labelled independent versus state, David Cameron versus Ed Miliband, Eton versus Haverstock Comprehensive School. It is a sterile debate that fails to move educational thinking forward and wastes everyone’s time.

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I find snow a trying substance to deal with. Whenever my son starts obsessively following the BBC weather site and getting up surprisingly early, his little face pressed to the window, I know that snow is in the air.

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In an article in The Telegraph Ben Fogle talks eloquently about how going away to boarding school made him the person he is today. He also recalls how he spent the best part of the first year desperately unhappy and begging his parents to take him away. However, they refused and he is now extremely grateful for their perseverance.

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David Willetts, the universities minister, spoke earlier this week about how few white working-class boys go on to study at university. He called this "the culmination of a decades-old trend in our education system which seems to make it harder for boys and men to face down the obstacles in the way of learning … That is a challenge for all policymakers and all parties."

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I see that Room 101 is due to start again shortly. I tend to think of myself as someone who doesn’t expend emotional energy on hating things, but no sooner had I rather smugly concluded this then I found myself irritated by a number of aspects of modern life. Here they are in no particular order:

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Last week saw us bemoaning excessive phone use at our staff meeting. Girls have long been allowed phones in school, but have been expected to keep them locked away during teaching hours only getting them out at lunch time to check for messages. However, they have gradually been appearing at other moments which has led to disapproval from staff and wistful comments about the halcyon pre-mobile days.

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I have followed the story of the downgrading of English GCSE results with increasing incredulity. I was initially relieved that it had not affected any St Swithun’s pupils as we had changed to IGCSE and felt very sorry for those young people who had received lower grades than they had been expecting.

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Phil Redmond’s opinion piece in today’s Independent entitled the ‘The curriculum isn’t working’ made me think about two books that I have read in the last six months: Why do I need a teacher when I’ve got Google? by Ian Gilbert and What’s the point of school? by Guy Claxton.

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Sometimes I read the newspaper and despair.

Michael Gove gives the impression of a man who enjoys a good night’s sleep before waking refreshed and full of new ideas every morning.

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I really enjoy learning about the brain and thinking about the most appropriate strategies to adopt in order to give everyone the best opportunities to use their brains to good
effect.

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I am sure that I am not alone in waking up some mornings feeling as though I have to rush through the day frantically multitasking, unable to focus for long on individual jobs, conscious that time is passing and there is still more to do. I am perfectly aware that this is not the most effective way to proceed, but it can be hard to snap out of it in a relentlessly stimulating and immediate world.

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In Saturday’s confirmation service Bishop Peter, the bishop of Basingstoke, spoke about water and its potential for reinvigorating and reenergising. Earlier in the week Martin Sixsmith had given a talk to girls, parents and friends of the school about Russia and about looking at its history through its culture. One of the audience members told me afterwards that she had no particular interest in Russia but simply wanted to learn about something new, to give her brain something of a workout. I hope everyone in the St Swithun’s family feels the same sense of excitement and energy at the thought of learning or doing something new.

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Recently, a report commissioned by the Women’s Sport and Fitness Foundation and conducted by Loughborough University into the causes of low levels of physical activity among girls was largely presented as proving that PE lessons at school actually put girls off sport http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17873519.
This is not the whole picture. What happens at school certainly influences girls’ view of sport, but other factors are also important such as the influence of friends, families and the media, and the fact that social norms still equate being sporty with being masculine and being feminine with looking attractive. 

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This week saw me in Bristol at the Boarding Schools Association conference which comprises an eclectic mix of independent and state boarding schools, prep and senior.
Highlights were as follows:

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On Friday I watched Blue Apple Theatre’s production of Hamlet here at school. Blue Apple Theatre was founded in 2005 as Winchester’s first inclusive theatre company and since then it has demonstrated the huge potential of people with learning disabilities when they are given opportunities in which to develop their talents. Hamlet spends much of the play wondering about his place in the world and how to express himself, feelings that strike a chord not only with the actors from Blue Apple – hence their choice of play –  but with all of us.

I was thinking about this when I read an article in yesterday’s Times about Lord Lucas of Crudwell and Dingwall, owner and executive editor of The Good Schools Guide, and his visit to St Mary’s Calne to debate girls’ education.

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The new bishop of Winchester, at his enthronement on Saturday, spoke about mission. His initial example was taken from Ben & Jerry’s, the global icecream company, whose strapline is “spreading love, peace and ice cream since 1978”. This set me wondering about our mission at St Swithun’s.

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I am currently reading Quiet: the power of introverts in a world that can’t stop talking by American writer Susan Cain. It is proving a fascinating and thought-provoking read not least because it challenges what we as educators most value in young people and in our own colleagues.

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Preparing some words of wisdom for our evensong on Mothering Sunday led me to consider the role of parents and to come up with the following observations written from the perspective both of a mother and headmistress.

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Recent stories in the media have sought to suggest that women have won the battle for equality.  For example young women in their twenties are now earning more money than men of the same age and more than 50% of new lawyers are women.

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Ever tried.  Ever failed.  No matter. Try again.  Fail again.  Fail better.  Samuel Beckett
I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work. Thomas Edison

Many of us are afraid of failure and of course it can be an extremely painful process: failing an exam, failing to get in to the university of your choice, failing to get the job of your dreams.

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