The Making of Her. Clarissa Farr

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 in a sentimental way because they represent a certain tradition or because they evoke a kind of Daisy Pulls It Off nostalgia may be amusing but it obscures what they are there to achieve in today’s world. They are important because they anticipate what we hope and believe will be the future for women: breathing the clear blue air of their capability without a thought to any limitation born of gender. So while the society into which young people emerge remains as unequal in its attitudes and opportunities as it still – sadly, shockingly – is, there will continue to be a role for girls’ schools to concentrate on developing resilient, clever, capable young women to take on the pressure and change it. So far from their being an anachronism, in fact, it turns out that girls’ schools are ahead of their time – the problem is that society isn’t quite ready for the young women educated in them. There is an argument about adapting to the realities, and I am thoughtful when people say that girls need to get used to the ‘real world’ that is out there. But how long are we going to wait before the gender pay gap is closed, or the excellent work of the 30% Club is replaced by the achievements of the 50% Club? Schools are not there merely to prepare young people to conform to society: they are about the future. The role of schools is to shape change. I don’t believe that learning to ‘adapt’ earlier – which all too often means learning how to play nicely, avoid appearing too clever, succeed by flirting and conform to male expectations of what you will be good at – is, in the long term, what girls should be doing.

      Emerging from a culture as empowering for girls as St Paul’s may be a shock. But I like it that Paulinas are shocked at what they find. They should be. If they are not being accorded equal treatment, taken advantage of as ‘diligent’ rather than brilliant by being given the dull but necessary work on which their male colleagues build their success (as one young alumna described her life at a well-known investment bank), balancing on their heels at the edge of the pub conversation about rugby and cars while the boys network their way to promotion, then I want them to be shocked. I want them not to be ready for that and I don’t want them to adapt. I want their secure sense of self and their deep confidence in their own capability, developed brick-by-rose-coloured brick at school, to give them the courage and clarity to drive change.

      But it’s time to talk about the other 50 per cent of humanity – the men. I want to reassure the men reading this book (I hope you’re out there still and haven’t rushed off to do the online shop or finish the vacuuming) that the answer is certainly not to demonise the male sex and hold them generally responsible for all the inequalities that women face. I admit we indulged in some affectionate teasing behind closed doors at St Paul’s – as I’m sure happened too at our expense across the river – but seriously, we have to guard against slipping into lazy caricature here. In our zeal to make society more equal, we women would do well to keep in mind that alienating men is not going to help us. There is a particular problem for the many enlightened men in the world who actually get all of this completely, because perhaps unavoidably they end up having to share responsibility for the legacy of prejudice and unfairness that women have faced for so long. But the result is that many of them, great modern sons, husbands and fathers who support and respect the women in their lives totally, need to feel they have a role and a voice. Why shut them out? They can’t