The Making of Her: Why School Matters. Clarissa Farr

Where the girls win out is in the leadership and organisation: the mixed teams have proved more successful in galvanising themselves to raise funds and see through the project than those with boys only, and guess what? The most successful teams of all are those who have a girl as the leader.

      The great head start in a girls’ school of course is that the whole curriculum is tailored to their interests. There is no subject area or activity in which girls do not excel or are seen as less apt or capable, or where their capability is seen as somehow surprising or counter-cultural. The scientists are all girls, as are all the mathematicians. The significance of this has been highlighted in a new way now that we are seeing so much more emphasis on capability in the STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and maths) and their link to higher pay. In the summer of 2017, Emma Duncan wrote a very well-researched article for The Times (‘Maths for girls is the way to close the pay gap’) arguing that as the best-paid jobs are in technology and computing, and as boys tend to choose maths more often and do better at it than girls, the answer to closing the pay gap is to have more girls do maths. This recommendation is already long since in place in girls’ schools, where maths and science are not, and never have been, seen as boys’ subjects – where so-called ‘maths anxiety’ isn’t a thing and where girls take up these subjects with all the enthusiasm and confidence you could wish. The Girls’ Schools Association, for example, analyses the take-up of all A-level subjects in its schools against national data, revealing that a girl educated in a GSA school is twice as likely to take maths and two and a half times as likely to take physics as her peers in all other schools taken together. Unsurprisingly, therefore, the numbers applying to read physical sciences, medicine and dentistry at university from GSA schools far outstrip national figures.

      As well as giving them unprejudiced access to the curriculum, training women to expect to lead is also a vital part of their education. A girls’ school is fertile ground for the emerging leader as there are so many opportunities to take initiative and show responsibility. In most schools, you can aspire to be form captain – or library monitor, or playground helper, or lunch queue supervisor – from the age of eleven. Later you may graduate to being on the school council or being captain of a sports team. And eventually you may reach the heights of house captain or even prefect. I recently saw a magazine advertising the open day of a distinguished co-ed competitor of ours in London. The photograph showed two smartly dressed senior pupils: a dark-haired boy looking confidently out at the camera and a blonde-haired girl, a little shorter as shown in the picture, looking happily up at him. Here was an image of confident leadership, certainly, but what an unfortunate and presumably unconscious message about gender. In a girls’ school, there is no question of being marginalised: girls hold all the senior leadership positions; all sports teams have a female captain, the first violin in the orchestra is always a girl and, as we’ve seen, girls get the chance to play the leading roles, whatever the school play.

      Those youngest girls who joined a month or so ago are getting to know one another, gradually piecing together their independent world of school, letting their parents into it a little, inviting them to watch their netball matches, or describing their teachers perhaps – and all the time keenly observing the older girls and their ways. As they become more confident, they become bolder: the senior girls say to me (as they do every year): ‘We were never as confident as that! I used to be terrified of the girls in the senior school! Yesterday I actually saw a MIV girl roll her eyes when I told her to go to the back of the lunch queue! What’s happened?’ So the new ones are settling in well, I’d think wryly … The desire to lead and the confidence for it is often there from an early age and will receive regular encouragement throughout the school.

      Some of my most rewarding times as a head have been spent with these all-female student leadership teams. The moment of appointing the new head girl was always a particular high point, making up as it did for some of the less edifying exchanges that occasionally took place in my office. The girl would arrive having been sent to see me. She must have had a good idea of the reason but could not be quite certain. The door would open and I’d invite her in. A cautious, slightly stilted exchange ensued:

      ‘Juliet, with the strong support you have received from your peers and from the staff, I’m delighted to invite you to become the next head girl. Of course I mustn’t assume you would want this … What do you say?’

      ‘Err … thank you very much …?’

      ‘I mean … you’d like to accept? You’ll be happy to do it?’

      ‘Totally … Yes!’

      And as she struggled to contain her delight in an attempt to convince as being entirely unflappable and mature, we would go on to discuss the practicalities of the announcement, before inviting in and appointing, together, the deputy head girl and team of prefects. By the time they had all been sitting shifting uneasily on my sofas stealing glances at each other with polite restraint for ten minutes, I realised they were about to burst so would release them into the school – hearing, once they thought themselves out of earshot, an explosion of excited mutual congratulation and pent-up laughter.

      The novelty over, it was impressive to see how quickly these teams would organise themselves without fuss, choosing the areas to work on during the year and hatching plans: building relationships with the younger year groups to tackle friendship issues or bullying; giving an assembly on phubbing (no, I didn’t know what it meant either: it’s tapping away on your phone when someone is trying to speak to you – a form of ‘snubbing’) or helping with revision strategy for those taking 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