Reflections on empowering girls

Welcome to 2024 and the new calendar year. I hope you are well rested and enjoyed the wonderful celebrations with friends and family over the Christmas break. It has been lovely to see the girls coming back into school, looking invigorated and ready for the Spring term. Best of luck to our Year 11 and 13 groups as they sit their mock examinations. 

On Friday 5th January, staff were in school for our third staff study day of the year. For me personally, starting the term with a training day is about sharing my passion for empowering our bright minds to carve out bright futures. The staff were able to ‘choose’ their training sessions throughout the day through a carousel pick ‘n’ mix model, including evaluative essay writing, interleaving the curriculum, listening in leadership, emotional wellbeing in the classroom, AI, retrieval practice and flipped learning. We were fortunate enough to have two guest speakers present to staff about the role they play in our school. Dominic Broom, our Chair of Governors, spoke about the importance of governance, link governor visits and visibility in leadership. Dr Kevin Stannard, GDST Director of Learning and Innovation, presented research papers on ‘The Girls’ Futures Report’.

I think it’s always important to reflect on why we do what we do. In the 1800s, girls only schools were introduced. It was recognised then that girls needed something different. Now that message is even stronger. As teachers in girls only schools, we are at the sharp end to empower these girls. We teach them to hold a mirror up to the world, with all it’s inequalities, to help transform it. We do this through our alumnae, our curriculum topics and our non-stereotypical co-curricular activities.

This is a fractured and chaotic world, marked by gender pay gaps, cases like Wade vs. Roe, motherhood penalties, and the lack of female representation at top tables. The world needs our Bromley High School girls, who demonstrate their own agency and efficacy. The voices and presence of our girls are needed in every sphere of life. We require the power of the activist, the modern suffragette, to keep knocking on those doors, even when they are being closed to women. Our work is crucial in this cause. Our job is not to focus on the problems but to concentrate on the solutions. We teach our girls how to speak up and speak out. When they hold the ladder for other people, they are fighting for the disenfranchised, be it gender, race, geographical location, economic background, or all of the above.

BlackRock have conducted an insightful research project looking at the impact of investing in women in business to raise the financial performance of those companies. The paper is called ‘Lifting Global Growth by Investing in Women’. They found that the benefits were vast in terms of employee satisfaction. Companies with the most diverse workforces outperformed their industry group peers with the least diverse workforces by 29% between 2014-2023. Women owned or co-managed hedge funds outperformed average hedge funds by 10.5% over the last 16 years. A survey of 350 start-ups showed that women-owned start-ups delivered twice as much per dollar invested, compared to those founded by men over the past ten years. However, women continue to be penalised in the financial sector through poor maternity leave, a lack of disclosure around diversity-metrics, and women’s representation deteriorates with seniority.

Our girls’ schools are like a metaphor for a seed – we nurture the seed, keep it warm, slowly introduce it to bigger pots, and expose it to a climate outside the safe greenhouse. Once it has grown, we plant the seed hardy, strong, ready to bloom and grow. We drip-feed the real world to our girls through charity fundraising, learning about AI, and visits to male-dominated industries. So, when we ‘plant’ the girls in the world, they are ready for frosty winters and scorching summers

As supported by the BlackRock study, we need women in every corner of the workplace, not just for their self-advancement but to improve circumstances for everyone. Supporting women supports the world.

We are Bromley High School. A part of the GDST. But also one of 400 girls’ schools in the UK and part of a movement of 300,000 female pupils all attending girls’ schools. As one of the biggest schools for girls, we are playing a key role to keep girls’ education at the forefront of practice and innovation. A school like ours is not a luxury, it’s crucial.

Our four GDST founders were genuine radicals, intent on winning equal educational opportunities for girls, in an era when compulsory schooling ended at age 11. Our GDST girls’ schools are single-sex by design. Girls’ schools are a necessary and indispensable part of the educational landscape, for the very same reasons our founders identified, as relevant today as they were in the 1800s.

Mrs Emily Codling, Headmistress