Principal’s Reflections

Six Ways to Help Your Teenager Prepare for Exams

8th May 2018 Originally published by the Girls' Schools Association as part of their Heads' Blogs series. Revision and exams are already upon us. While there is no quick fix to ease stress or guarantee success, here are a few tips to help parents prepare teenager...

Are you pushing your child too hard?

14th March 2018 Originally published by the Girls' Schools Association as part of their Heads' Blogs series. Many parents are driven by a natural desire to provide the best for their children, through which it is easy to fall into the trap of unintentionally tipping...

Girls In Sport: Time To Level The Playing Field

25th October 2017 Originally published on The Huffington Post. Sport England's Active People Survey suggests that almost 230,000 more people played sport weekly in 2016 than in 2015, an encouraging trend. However, they also reported that two million fewer women play s...

The Future Of UK Education: AI, Virtual Lessons And Jobs That Don’t Exist Yet

20th July 2017 Originally published on The Huffington Post. From the whiteboards and VHS players of 20 years ago, to the tablets and virtual learning of today, education is evolving in exciting new ways.New university concepts are challenging the status quo and pre...

The Arts: Essential Or Expendable?

13th March 2017 Originally published on The Huffington Post. As we confront unprecedented political and economic changes both in the UK and across the world, just how important are the arts to our society? Do we need to protect them at all costs or, if push came to ...

Empowering The Next Generation Of Women

25th November 2016 Originally published on The Huffington Post. Empowered women can change the world. From the first woman who declined to say ‘obey’ in her wedding vows to the first female President of the Royal College of Surgeons, women are achieving personal and p...

Women In Engineering Day: Forging a Pathway for Girls in STEM

24th June 2016 Originally published on The Huffington Post. ‘Creative’, ‘inspiring’, ‘exciting’ and ‘fantastic’ - just some of responses from Year 7 girls when they were asked to sum up what engineering means to them. So with such passion for STEM subjects at an ea...

Single-Sex or Co-Educational - Which Offers the Best Preparation for ‘Real Life’?

9th May 2016 Originally published on The Huffington Post. Decisions about education are some of the most important choices that parents and children have to make. There is certainly not a one-size-fits-all solution and these choices should be informed by a child’...

Why Student Wellbeing Is as Important as Academic Achievement

19th February 2016 Originally published on The Huffington Post. Our children are our most loved and precious resource, and often our joy, purpose and renewal comes from our dealings with them. Sometimes they make us frustrated and occasionally even desperate but usuall...

A reciprocal approach to learning for a new generation

1st July 2015 Originally published on the GSA website. Let’s start with the basics. Our children are our most loved and precious resource. This is not just because without them we’d be joining the long list of extinct species, but because a disproportionately larg...

Gathering STEAM!

23rd June 2015 Having originally trained as a structural engineer with Ove Arup before moving into teaching, I know there is a great deal to be excited about regarding new and currently unimagined careers in Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics (ST...

LESS FORMAL HOMEWORK BUT NOT LESS LEARNING

8th June 2015 Lead editorial, The Times, 6th June 2015. The Principal's interview with The Times was published on Saturday 6th June 2015. The headline about homework being banned was not entirely accurate. As part of our overall review of teaching and learning at ...

FINDING A VOICE - Encouraging pupil-led initiatives

10th March 2015 Alongside the routine cyclical Spring term events such as mock exams, the early weeks of this particular term have proved to be lively ones in College for us as a community. I am delighted to see various pupil-led initiatives coming to fruition. Satu...