Dec 06

The dangers of pole-dancing …

I am perplexed by the apparent craze for pole-dancing. It may not in fact be a craze, but we certainly seem to be hearing more about it these days. Marketed as ‘pole fitness’, its proponents are quick to stress the physical benefits of the classes, as well as the fact that they are ‘fun’. Quite apart from the fact that hanging upside down clinging on to a metal pole doesn’t particularly strike me as ‘fun’ (although I do recognise that this is probably a personal perspective), I find it hard to separate in my mind the notion of ‘fitness’ from the notion of degrading sexual entertainment, performed by women for men, in strip clubs.

I doubt that I am alone – I would find it hard to imagine that any practiser of ‘pole fitness’ is not aware of its sexual connotations, so the question is – can this activity be reclaimed and/restored to ‘innocence’, or at least to a state where it is entirely unconnected with its more demeaning form? Even if it can, eventually – and the ‘pole fitness’ enthusiasts will in due course take their positions as great liberators of women – then surely this is an adult struggle, and not one for our children?

Why, then, are we introducing our children – girls, of course – to this activity, at an ever earlier age? Last week it was reported in The Sun that seven-year-old girls were taking pole-dancing classes … and pictures of them were being posted on Facebook by their parents. If their parents really do not see the psychological and practical dangers in introducing their seven-year olds to a heavily sexualised adult activity, then I think we have failed somewhere along the line in our society to pass on the wisdom of ages – of what it means to be a child, and of what it means to be able to grow up rather than miss out on the process altogether.

Still, this realisation just makes it all the more important that we do stand up and that we are counted when we see our children exposed to age-inappropriate messages about sex and sexuality. Our children deserve a childhood.

Dec 06

Building a third dimension to your life: women take note!

Last week I had the real pleasure of hearing a talk by Dr Heather McGregor, aka Mrs Moneypenny of the Financial Times. Frank, forthright and funny, she was imparting the benefit of her wisdom, gained over many years placing men and women in top jobs, to an audience of Sixth Formers at Wellington College, but what she had to say was relevant to women at all stages of their careers – and, indeed, lives.

One particular point she made struck home. She was quite clear: in life, you need to do much more than just work and run a home – you need to have a third dimension. This could perhaps be a particular hobby or passion, or it could be doing something for others in a structured and organised way, helping to make a difference in their lives. As part of the same conference she was interviewing Helena Morrissey, the highly successful CEO of Newton Investment Management, and founder of the Thirty Per Cent Club, which aims to ensure that boardrooms have at least 30% representation by women by 2015, and it was quite obvious that this ‘third dimension’ to Ms Morrissey’s life was both personally enriching and enhanced the other two main centres of her life. As a mother she was as a result more focused on making sure that her children had no psychological barriers that would stop them achieving because of their gender; and as a CEO she was committed to more effective board management (remember, of course, that studies have shown that greater diversity – including gender diversity – on boards leads to greater effectiveness). Above all, she is seeking to make a difference in the world, and this translates into all the areas of her life in a unifying and really quite powerful fashion.

Sometimes – particularly in the early stages of their careers – women feel they have no time for a ‘third dimension’, but when they work out how to manage it all, and rise above the day-to-day routine that can limit creative work and life patterns, then finding a way to pursue their passion and do something that really, really matters, can be truly liberating and empowering. It completes the picture and closes the circle; more than this, it reaches out to others and fulfils the responsibility that we all have to play a bigger part in our community and world. This is what society is all about – together we are stronger, and each of us must take it upon ourselves to stretch out beyond the bounds of our day-to-day lives.

Mrs Moneypenny was right – and this is not just good careers advice; it is good life advice. Her book – Careers Advice for Ambitious Women – is out in January. I think you will find it excellent.

Dec 03

Preparing girls to ‘have it all’ in life

On Wednesday I addressed an audience of Sixth Form girls at Wellington College in Berkshire, at a conference designed to explore whether it is possible for girls and women to ‘have it all’ in their lives. My approach was straightforward – the answer is, quite simply, ‘yes’ – they just need to work out what ‘having it all’ actually means! Step 1 in any process of planning to make the most of one’s life must start with a deep exploration and understanding of the landscape.

You barely need to glance at some of our tabloid newspapers or magazines to see that girls and women ‘having it all’ is a hot topic. Hardly an edition of the Daily Mail lands on doorsteps without it containing an article – maybe more than one – on working women and how they manage it – or don’t. The novel by Allison Pearson, ‘I don’t know how she does it’, was only just published in 2002, and of course the film starring Sarah Jessica Parker has not long been released. This ‘having it all’ or not is a big source of debate and controversy.

So why is it so controversial? Well, we live in an interesting period of our social history – a period of transition as far as gender issues are concerned, but one that often masks itself as a period of post-transition. Laws are one thing; people’s perceptions of the world, influenced by their families and friends around them, are quite another. The world of my grandmother’s youth, before women even had the vote, is a real lifetime away, but is in fact inextricably bound with the present through the people we know and who have influenced us in our lives. My grandmother’s understanding of the world was shaped by her early 20th century life, and this understanding has lived on to some extent in my mother, and in me. This pattern is replicated in almost every family in Britain.

The danger comes, of course, when this understanding is left unchallenged, or just accepted as truth, fact or normality. If we are honest, and look with a critical eye at the world around us, we can see these underlying understandings of women’s place in the world in many facets of our world, as often as not fed by the media: the sense lurking in the background that a women’s place is rightfully in the home, that men are the breadwinners, that in order to succeed in the world of work, you need to be able to employ masculine traits. All nonsense, of course, but we recognise them, and they are pervasive.

Where is the right path in all of this? What should women be doing? The point, of course, about this being a period of social transition is that people don’t know the answer to this yet … but the consequence of this, therefore, is that it is all up for grabs. Never before has the landscape been so open to women carving out their own pathways – the rhetoric is there, the everyday acceptance of equality is there, embedded in daily communication, and some quite interventionist legislation hovers threateningly in the background – talk of quotas in parliamentary parties, and an obligation on boards of FTSE 100 companies to bring up the proportion of their female directors to 25% at least by 2015.

In truth, no-one wants quotas or targets that are met by artificially promoting women just because they are women – successful companies only want the best, and no-one wants to feel as though they are being given a position not on merit, but because of their gender. But what is significant is that the threats are there in the first place, driven by government and a ruling social class which determines the direction of our thoughts. It is the ‘done thing’ not only to think that equality is a good thing, but also to be seen to be doing something about it.

This is fertile ground for girls to be able to achieve whatever they might want to achieve. And in this climate, we are meanwhile emboldening girls in our schools to feel that there is nothing that they cannot do. But they do have to be bold, they do have to be brave, and they do have to know themselves and what they want, and this is exactly what I was saying on Wednesday.

Nov 30

The Young Ambassador, feather earrings and dinner – a winning combination

When I took up my role as President of the Girls’ Schools Association this year, I really wanted to ensure that I used the platform I was given in order to be able to achieve more than just a representation of the value of girls’ education. I say to the girls at school that they need to be mindful of the opportunities they are given to help influence others and make a difference, and it was as a direct result of this that – after discussion in school – I decided that we would adopt two charities both as our school charities for the next few years, and as our GSA charities. Both charities were to be focused on the education of girls and young women, as this was the uniting factor, connecting the work we do in our girls’ schools with the work of the charities themselves. One charity would have an international focus – and we chose the fantastic children’s charity, Plan, with whom I travelled to Bangladesh recently; I wanted the other charity to have a very local focus, pertinent to my school, and we chose The Prince’s Trust (South West).

Over a million – 1 in 5 – young people in the UK are not in education, employment or training, so the need for the Prince’s Trust programmes is large, and in choosing the Trust as our local charity, we were very specific about what we wanted the money we raised to go towards: it needed, obviously, to benefit local people, and we wanted the money to go specifically to women, in keeping with our aims and objectives as a school and an Association. We settled, therefore, on the Trust’s Enterprise programme, which provides small grants (and training) to help young people – more women than men, in fact – to set up in business in the south west.

Until last Monday – the first main conference dinner of the Girls’ Schools Association Conference in Bristol – I doubt that I would have shifted from this perspective, but following on from the testimony of a Young Ambassador for the Prince’s Trust who came to speak to us after dinner, I would happily let the Trust use any money they receive for whatever purposes they deem fit (as long as it benefited women, of course!). This is all down to Ashleigh, the Young Ambassador, who told us her story. Bullied at school for being tall, and with a difficult home life, she was introduced to the Prince’s Trust and followed their Team programme, which developed in her a resilience which she had simply not had the opportunity to develop up to that point.

She described – in a very matter-of-fact but very moving way – how she had liked school, but had been unable to learn partly because of the bullying she experienced and partly because she just hadn’t been shown – ever – how to separate out her emotions so that they did not paralyse her when things weren’t going right in her personal life. She had clearly gained an immeasurably huge amount from her experience with the Prince’s Trust – not just confidence, but robustness, ambition and the ability to work and organise her life. She has a job and has plans to study fashion design – what a success! If her impressive feather earrings were anything to go by, she will make an impact before long on that world.

We handed over a cheque for £5k on the evening, following on from a cheque earlier in the term for £4.5k, and we ran a prize draw on the evening which raised several hundred more pounds. More is planned. All of this will help young people like Ashleigh. As for Ashleigh herself, she said after the diner and her speech that she was so inspired by what she had seen and experienced in her time with us that she was off to design even more. Do watch this space!

Nov 24

Heads of Girls’ Schools: making a real world of difference

I returned yesterday from the annual Girls’ Schools Association which I was leading in my capacity as this year’s President, and I can report that it was an amazing occasion. The programme – based on the theme of ‘Making a World of Difference’ – was extremely full, packed with speakers who stimulated and challenged, and also with moments of strong camaraderie and togetherness. So much happened; I could blog incessantly about my learnings and observations from the conference between now and Christmas, and still not cover everything.

So to start with, here are my key thoughts, emanating from a few days in the city of Bristol, where a group of around 200 Heads of independent girls’ schools met to share and learn:

  1. We still have a lot to do as a human race to make the world a better place. Kate Blewett showed us this when she talked about her incredible documentaries, including The Dying Rooms, as did Marie Staunton when she talked about the plight of girls around the world without an education.
  2. Positive progress towards good is being made. We are grasping hold of the positive power of internet technology, for instance, and working out how to protect our children from danger. Tanith Carey, Andre Baker and Claire Perry all spoke openly and frankly about the issues and the difficult path ahead, but because of their pioneering efforts, we are building a safer future.
  3. Heads of schools are together a powerful force; Heads with a shared, focused mission to ensure that girls and young women fulfil their potential and are ready to play their important roles in the world, are an even more powerful force. Moreover, they are not afraid to challenge prevailing stereotypes and political directions, as seen in their incisive questioning of Nick Gibb MP, Minister of State for Schools, and in their confrontation of Ralph Lucas’s impressions of girls’ schools.
  4. Society is beginning to wake up to the risk of a moral vacuum that has come about because we have often been afraid of taking a stand and providing a moral framework for young people and their parents. Schools have an enormous role in helping to create or put flesh on the bones of such a framework, and we cannot shirk this responsibility.

On this last point (on which I will elaborate further in my next blog), I realised a while ago that this is what drives me in my work and in my life. As leaders of young people and of adults, we have an enormous responsibility for the moral guidance of future generations, and we have to work both to prepare them and to change those aspects of society which make it near impossible for young people to be able to distinguish right from wrong. Positive progress is indeed being made … but we have a long way to go. Onwards …

Nov 19

Making a World of Difference: preparing for the annual conference of Heads of the Girls’ Schools Association

Monday marks the beginning of the annual conference of the Girls’ Schools Association, and therefore marks the nearing of the end of my year as President of the GSA. It has been an astonishingly stimulating year, and I shall reflect further on it as the year actually reaches its end, but before this, we have a very interesting three days of talks and meetings ahead of us, in the city of Bristol. The Heads of around 200 girls’ schools in the UK will be attending, with some international visitors and other supporters of the GSA; it is always a great opportunity to take time away from school in order to become refreshed and re-focused, and it is an opportunity too to draw courage from others and to feel part of a wider movement dedicated to the education of girls and young women.

This year, the theme of our conference is ‘Making a World of Difference’. More than ever these past 11 months, as I have been drawn into the work of the Girls’ Schools Association, engaging in the national educational debate and issues surrounding education such as parenting, the work-life balance debate and working mothers, I have been struck by what a small world it is in which we live. The nature of technology and its speed means we are more able than ever before to communicate quickly and effectively but it has also been brought home to me just how many of the same issues and concerns seem to be at the heart of societies around the world.

We will welcome to Bristol many speakers, who are leaders in their chosen field, who will inspire us, challenge us and speak to us about many of the practical issues facing the independent schools’ sector. Nick Gibb, Minister of State for Schools, is speaking on Tuesday, and we are joined on Monday by Jean Gross, the Government’s Communications Champion, along with Claire Perry MP, the writer and journalist Tanith Carey, the award-winning film-maker Kate Blewett, and many others. Ralph Lucas from the Good Schools Guide and Annabel Heseltine from First Eleven are speaking on Wednesday, as are successful businesswomen from everywoman, and Marie Staunton, the CEO of Plan UK. The programme is bursting with fascinating speakers and interesting events, including a service at St Mary Redcliffe and a reception on board ss Great Britain, and I am looking forward to three days which will leave us all refreshed and reinvigorated before we return to our schools on Wednesday and head towards the last section of this long and busy Autumn Term.

It has been a real privilege to serve the GSA as President this year. I feel more than ever before that we are all stronger as schools from being part of such a powerful network, celebrating girls’ schools, which provides us with cohesion and unity while respecting the rights of each individual school to be different and unique. I shall enjoy marking this during this coming week.

Nov 17

Social media – the good news

Working with teenagers, a considerable amount of the educational discussion about social media focuses on the negative; the time-wasting, the distraction from study, the unhealthy preoccupation with a screen rather than more balanced fresh air and exercise, the reputational risk of posting unwise comments, and the dangers of cyber-bullying. These are all very real issues, and the perils are not to be dismissed lightly; barely a week goes by without the media reporting a traumatic story of online bullying, some of which have ended tragically in teenage suicide. Last week’s survey reporting that a third of teenagers have been affected by cyber-bullying was accompanied by the story of Natalie Farzaneh, a teenager from York, whose experiences at the hands of bullies online led her to self-harm and to consider taking her own life.

Natalie managed to turn her life around, and is now a motivational speaker, speaking out against bullies on the internet; her mission, as is ours in schools, is to educate young people about the harm that they can do online, and how they can protect themselves and others. This is an incredibly important message … but it is not the only message about online social activity, and sometimes we risk losing the positive amongst the warnings. I have been very struck recently by the positive effects of social media, used wisely, and we need to remember this too.

When I went to Bangladesh last month with Plan UK, I felt that I had an obligation to share what I saw and experienced with the wider world, and social media was the most obvious platform. I blogged in advance (and afterwards), I tweeted regularly, and I posted to Facebook. The effects were remarkable; since returning, I have been overwhelmed by the number of people who have said that they followed my story with interest, and really felt as though they connected with what I was living during my journey. Posts I made were retweeted and shared, and have appeared on a number of other websites, including the Gabbitas website. One mother explained that she had been reading out one of my posts when her 6 year old overheard it, and it prompted a deep and important discussion on child domestic workers. A university friend messaged me while I was there, asking about the purchasing power of the taka, so he could understand better what I was describing. Someone else has applied for a job at Plan UK as a direct result of reading my blog.

We need to be reminded from time to time of the power of the internet to connect and to do good in the world. Perhaps if we speak out strongly and honestly about the good and bad facets of the online world, then we will maximise the former and minimise the latter. The world needs us to build positive relationships; let us put our energies into ensuring that we do.

Nov 14

A terrifying experience at Tate Britain

It is not often that I am terrified by a work of art, but this would not be too strong a description of what happened to me last Friday. I was in London for a lunch time meeting connected with the Girls’ Schools Association, and because I was slightly early, I popped into Tate Britain to explore the exhibits and indulge my curiosity. I don’t always ‘get’ modern art, but I am always open to new experiences, and I thought that perusing works that were acknowledged as great would be a better use of a spare 30 minutes than simply checking my BlackBerry.

I wandered through the galleries, opened my mind, and stretched my understanding – always a good way to refresh the soul – until I came to a nondescript plywood door, with an attendant outside and a board indicating that this too was an exhibit: Mike Nelson’s ‘The Coral Reef’. I had to check that it was all right to enter; when given permission by the benevolent attendant, who must experience such uncertainty on the part of visitors every day, I stepped bravely but cautiously through the door … and embarked on a real journey.

If you have read about this installation, or visited it, then you will know exactly what I saw – small, tawdry rooms with doors which creaked and led to other chambers and corridors – or which led nowhere at all. The installation is entirely enclosed, and there is no map, so there is no sense of where you are headed. Dim lights, 1950’s sofas and shocking artefacts such a clown’s mask build an impression – a very real impression – of a disturbing world which, even if not post-apocalyptic, is a world of unforgiving menace. At one point I became totally, frighteningly, disorientated, arriving in a room which was an exact replica of the first room I had entered – but with no way out. When I found my way back to the entrance, I jumped to see again the benevolent attendant – who must experience this too from visitors every day – and my experience of relief at emerging from a labyrinth of ‘lost souls’, as it is described, was palpable.

The Coral Reef is an exceptional piece of art; it had a physical, emotional and psychological impact on me and the images remain seared in my mind. If you want to hear Mike Nelson talking about his work, look at this section of the Tate Britain website. This was a piece of modern art which I totally ‘got’.

Nov 12

Change in the air … Australia is beckoning

I say to my girls at school often that they should make the very most of their lives, as they only have one life, and every moment of it is precious. When opportunities come along, they should be grasped and girls should not be afraid to move outside the comfortable zones in which their lives have developed; in fact, it is only by doing so that they can truly experience the world and live life to the full. I say too, frequently, that this is a global world which they inhabit, and that they should be prepared to live, work, study and travel far and wide in order to be able to appreciate what this magnificent world of ours is, and to develop an understanding of humanity which will help them to make a positive change for the better in their own lives and in the lives of others.

And so … I am practising what I preach and have heard the call to move with my family to Australia in January 2013 – just over a year from now – to become the Head of Australia’s leading girls’ school, Ascham School in Sydney. It is a great school, with a long tradition of excellence in the education of young women, and I feel privileged to be able to continue this tradition and help prepare girls for the challenges of the future that awaits them. I am glad to be bringing an international dimension, and I am glad to be faced with new challenges of my own – a wonderful new culture, a different school system, a new national curriculum … to name but a few. It is a great honour to be selected for this post, and I shall enjoy immensely getting to know and lead the community.

I shall miss my current school, St Mary’s Calne, tremendously, and I am so proud of what I have achieved over the past decade. The school is riding high in every respect – it is a strong, focused, deeply happy and intensely warm school, and the outstanding teams of staff, overseen by a superb Board of Governors, will make the transition to another Headmistress an easy and seamless one. I shall miss the girls, the staff and the parents, but the time has come to leave behind what I see as the best school in the UK. I shall never forget what we have experienced together, and I have no intention of losing contact. An email sent from the UK to Australia takes a few seconds to arrive, and you can travel from any one point in this world to somewhere else and arrive within 24 hours. The world is smaller than it has ever been. Besides, though, we still have over a year together, and there is much to be done in this time!

This next phase of my life – and of my family’s life – is about building upon what I (and we) have learned to this point, not about leaving it behind. There is too much to do in respect of the education of young people, and of girls in particular, and I feel incredibly highly motivated to make this work across the globe. My recent trip to Bangladesh (see previous blogs) brought home to me with a power that almost took my breath away how important it is for all of us in the developed world – from Europe to the US to Australasia, drawing in all developed countries en route – to reach out beyond our boundaries to help make this world a fairer place, and this often starts with the education of girls and women. Every girl I help to educate – be it in the UK or in Australia – has the potential to help make the difference in the world that the world so needs, and it is an enormous privilege to help make this happen.

As I am fond of saying, and as the girls at St Mary’s Calne have adopted on my behalf as a school motto … onwards and upwards! Watch this space.

Nov 11

Remembering the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month …

Today – Remembrance Day – people across the globe will pause for reflection at 11am on 11.11.11 – a poignant combination of figures on a poignant day. Every year in our school assembly around this time I talk about remembrance, and I firmly believe that it is quite right to do so – we should never forget the people who gave their lives so that the lives of others might be better, nor should we forget that it is up to all of us to ensure that war, fighting, and terror disappear from our world.

And we will best remember this when we remember the consequences of war – of the millions killed and injured, and those whose lives have been devastated as a result. In helping us to do this, the work of one organisation is key: an organisation which seeks to keep these memories alive, lest we forget -the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Today, the Commission takes care of the graves and memorials of 1.7 million men and women from across the Commonwealth who died in the two World Wars. In all there was a total of 1,146,918 burials. Picture these graves laid end-to-end: the line would be about 2,300 kms long – a horrific number, but it does give us a better idea of the enormous task that the Commonwealth War Graves Commission carried out then, and continues today.

It all began when, at the beginning of the First World War, a man called Fabian Ware, too old to serve in the army, arrived in France in September 1914 to lead a mobile unit of the British Red Cross. He very soon noticed that there was no one in charge of marking and recording the graves of those killed. He understood how distressing this was both for relatives at home and for those still fighting, to think that lives had been sacrificed and then the bodies just left to rot in some anonymous field and he decided to make sure this was not allowed to happen. In order to comfort relatives, the newly founded Commission quickly completed some experimental cemeteries, using the best architects and garden designers to make the places ‘less miserable and unsightly.’ At Rouen, the writer Rudyard Kipling (who himself had a long association with the Commission) described ‘the extraordinary beauty of the cemetery and the great care that the attendants had taken of it, and the almost heartbroken thankfulness of the relatives of the dead who were buried there.’

Today, there are Commonwealth graves and memorials in 148 countries across the world. It is always hard to imagine numbers on this scale when we talk about the dead of the two world wars – and these are only the people who died. Still more difficult to imagine are the numbers of parents, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, aunts and uncles, the girlfriends, the boyfriends and the neighbours left behind to pick up the pieces of their own lives after suffering the loss of someone they loved.

War is devastating. As the number of survivors of the World Wars gradually fades, it is up to us all, each one of us, to remember this.

There will be no peace

till attitudes change;

till self-interest is seen as part of common interest;

till old wrongs, old scores, old mistakes are deleted from the account;

till the aim becomes co-operation and mutual benefit rather than revenge or seizing maximum personal or group gain;

till justice and equality before the law become the basis of government;

till basic freedoms exist;

till leaders – political, religious, educational – wholeheartedly embrace the concepts of justice, equality, freedom, tolerance, and reconciliation as a basis for renewal;

till parents teach their children new ways to think about people.

There will be no peace: till enemies become fellow human beings.