 Welcome to Pookey Ponders, the podcast where I explore big questions with brilliant people. I'm Pookey Nightsmith and I'm your host. Today's question is, how can we empower girls to be fiercely independent? And I'm in conversation with Beth Dawson. Yeah, I'm Beth, Beth Dawson, and I'm the head of a girl's school in Sutton. And that's kind of my whole life, I would say. Your whole life. So our question today is, how can we empower girls to be fiercely independent? And we will get on to that, but I'm interested. First of all, just you are a head, a relatively recent head, and you find yourself as the head of a school during the pandemic. Do you have any idea what you were letting yourself in for? No, and it's been the classic kind of baptism of fire. And so many people have said that to me as well over the past six months. But I think anyone's first year as a head is not going to be easy. I was really lucky that I was deputy head before. So I knew the systems. I knew everyone. I knew the direction of the school. I knew the girls. That was really important. And fundamentally, I had buy-in from the staff, and that was really important. So I think then you just go into crisis management mode and every day you think, oh, this is going to be a challenge today. We just get through the day. I started in headship thinking, oh, I think you plan ahead and you're strategic. And there's a real balance in headship of strategic planning and firefighting. And I think then what happened with COVID, it's just been firefighting. And it's only now that school's finished for summer that I'm back to kind of, okay, so we're back to the strategy now. And we need to think about five years time rather than in some cases, five days we had to make changes. So I think there are so many positives. So, so many positives that obviously it's been terrible for the country and everything. But I think as a school, it's brought us closer together as a community. And it's made me, it's reaffirmed for me what I love about the school and what I love about my staff, what I love about the girls, everything that they've exhibited over the past 14 weeks is exactly what I would have expected. But you just never know how people are going to respond in a crisis. And what is it that you've loved about the way they've responded to me a bit more about that? I think they've just risen to the challenge of it. They have not, you know, they could have not engaged. They could have not bothered. They could have, you know, it's very easy when you're on your own in your bedroom or you're at home with your parents to not engage with what's being offered. And they have done. And the work that they've produced, some of the things that they've done, some of the ideas that they've had, I think, in adversity. And it may be a generalization, well, it's definitely a generalization to say, but I think in adversity, in adversity, women and girls are their most creative and their most kind of innovative. So some of the things that the girls have come up with, some of the videos that they've made, some of the... I mean, I watched a rap video about physics equations. I've seen anti-Starbucks adverts, not anti-Starbucks, but, you know, adverts about the plastic use in Starbucks. Things that I don't think those girls would have considered, even things like designing t-shirts or, you know, thinking more deeply about faith, things like that, which they've had a chance to reflect on. And I think school can sometimes be so... You've got the commute and you've got the lessons and you've got lunch and you've got all the social interaction and all the different things that are coming at you all day. But actually at home, you have more chance to think. And that's where the creativity comes. So that's how they've made me proud, really. But you've provided a very clear vehicle for that creativity and structured it, haven't you? I mean, it's learning unleashed, isn't it, the curriculum that you've introduced? Yeah, the guided home learning, yeah, and the teacher unleashed stuff. I think that was important because the research, right from day one, from countries like Hong Kong that have been in lockdown for much longer, and my best friend actually works in Peru and they've been in lockdown for a lot longer than us as well. And all of the research was about structure and routine and how, you know, that's what kids needed. So for me it was about, okay, how can we give them that school structure at home and also then the freedom in the first few weeks there was an adapting stage. And so some of them did opt out, some of them did not attend afternoon lessons or they needed to go for a walk or they needed, you know, we were constantly having to evolve what we were offering as well because you don't think about silly things like a parent emailed me after the first four days and said, it's great, absolutely love guided home learning but she's not having a chance to go to the toilet because we hadn't considered that, you know, in a normal school day they would travel from lesson to lesson and that's when they popped the loop. So then we had to be, okay, well, we need to build in, you know, rest and rehydration breaks in between each lesson. And we were just constantly trying to evolve things so that with the girls at heart really, that was the main focus is trying to keep them secure and I think there's a security in school. There's a sense of wellbeing that comes from knowing what the next step is, especially if you're any school of girl who has any sort of, which is a lot of girls, anxiety issues or worries or anything like that, there's a definite sense of security and wellbeing that comes from, I know where I'm going next, I know what my next lesson is, I know who my teacher's going to be, I know what equipment I'm going to need in that lesson and so we tried to keep that for them. And you seem to have made a very specific kind of focus on the kind of years 11 and 13, those girls who weren't going to be doing their exams and where a lot of their sense of purpose might have come from that and that's suddenly been taken away from them and that kind of curriculum, I have to say, when I saw that curriculum that you put together, I hadn't seen anything like that coming out from anywhere else and I just looked at that and thought, what a gift to those girls and what an amazing way to be able to spend a few weeks and it struck me as something that for some of them would be literally life changing, that this would be the moment when you would do something more deeply for the first time and maybe connect with the subjects. I mean, what was your, tell us a little bit about that, how you developed that curriculum and what drove it and what you hope to achieve them and how it's gone. I think that teaching can be, especially in year 11 and 13, a lot about teaching to a specification, teaching to an exam, teaching to an outcome, and the girls work towards that and everything that they do is driven by that, unfortunately, it's not the system that I would like actually, but that is the system we're in and when that, when that eventual outcome, that goal gets taken away, what are you left with? You're left with kind of chaos and confusion and I think a lot of the girls were incredibly upset. They wanted that chance to show how deeply they'd learned things, to express, you know, some of them, it was just about that one grade they might have got in that one subject that is their passion and that can be anything, in our school that can be drama, it can be English, it can be science, it can be, you know, someone who's amazing at physics, someone who's excellent at computing and they just want that opportunity to prove that that's where their passion is and that's what they've really put all their effort into. And so we wanted to give them an opportunity to show that, but without that eventual outcome of the exams. So right from the start, what we said to staff was, this is about passion, this is a passion project, you can do anything and we had, you know, we had a French teacher develop an amazing unit that I loved looking at myself on Chanel and the fashions of France and that is nothing really to do with, you know, they wouldn't be examined on that ever but that's something that is her passion and she then conveys that to the girls and they make, like you say, I hope they might find a spark in that, they might find something that they then take on somewhere and it might just be that, you know, they, it's something that becomes some, they're interested in it if they ever visit France or it might be something that sparks more than that. So some of the units, I mean, I got, I had the privilege of judging the outcomes of some of the units so we did try to make outcomes of some description. So we had a marketing unit which was about our new cafe and the girls put the proposal together for, you know, how it would engage the community and how they would market that. And I think that those girls really did find a spark and a passion for marketing that they might not have, you know, they might not have considered before but I think that's where teaching is, it can be really difficult because you're constrained by the content you have to cover and suddenly we weren't. So we had a whole half term of being able to teach what we thought would encourage the girls to be independent learners in that subject. That's why we called it teach unleashed because really we're unleashed from the freedom that, you know, we were unleashed from the constraint rather and we had sudden freedom to teach things that our teachers loved and that's when teaching's at its best really. And did you give the teachers complete freedom because certainly reading through those brochures it looked to me like, you know, everyone had been able to go what I'd love to teach if I could do anything it was. That's actually what we said. So I said to the staff, you know, this is about inspiring the girls to want to learn independently because we couldn't force them to do this. They're year 11, they're year 13, they would have gone and study leave. And as I say, the engagement with it was amazing. So that shows a lot about the girls that actually want to learn. They want to find something that sparks their learning and their passion. So I just said to staff, you can teach whatever you want if there's a unit that maybe you taught because specifications change so frequently. For me, there's a unit that I taught when I first started teaching that I've always loved but you never get a chance to teach it because it's not on the exam. So, you know, you couldn't teach, you couldn't fit it in. And I said to them, that's the unit. I would now be going, wow, I can take that unit that I love to teach and I'm not teaching it for any purpose other than to impart knowledge and to impart a love of my subject. So yeah, that's how we ended up with crazy varieties of units. I think that was important. So yeah, no, and that's it. And yeah, I thought it looked fabulous and I kind of what I'm interested to know as well is was that really about the learners or the teachers or both? I think it was about both because like I said, I think the best learning from a teacher comes when the child knows that that teacher loves their subject and is passionate about what they're teaching. I think girls in particular, but children in general are incredibly perceptive and they know when a teacher is bored of content or when a teacher is not engaged in what they're actually trying to teach. So that was about the girls in that I think if you've got engaged teachers, teachers teaching things that they love and that they're really interested in, then the girls are going to learn more from them. And do you think that this kind of helped with your, you know, that going back to that central question about sort of fierce independence and that that you strive for your girls? Yeah, I mean, for me the fierce independence, so when we thought about fiercely independent as a concept which was just after I took over as head, I think there was a weariness maybe of the word fierce because fierce can have negative connotations as well as positive. But for me, the fierceness is about boldness, it's about strength and it's about self-belief. So I think you can be independent but quite passively independent. So for me being fiercely independent is about the girls knowing what they want and knowing how they're going to get that. And that teach-unleash scheme was all about that. It was about, you know, as a student you've now got this time where you would have been, you know, sticking to a revision plan and all the things we've equipped you with over the past two or three years, you've now got this openness to pursue three or four units of work that you actually are interested in. Because you want to. Because that's, you know, something that you aspire to rather than because you have to. So it changed the whole dynamic, I think, of those year groups where it's normally quite horrible, I think. You don't sound like a massive fan of the kind of exam factory system. I'm very realistic about it in that I know that it's, you know, it's the best system we have at the moment. But I'm a drama teacher. So there's all manner of debates about whether you can examine creativity, whether you can examine drama as a discipline. And that's always something that's been in my head ever since I started teaching. But I think that exams have become, especially since 2016, since the new specifications, they've become about memory and rote learning and memorising. And I'm not sure that that's a skill that you ever actually have to use in life. I can't think of a time when you would have to use rote learning. I suppose when I give an open morning speech, I've memorised some of the speech and I've thought about the points that I want to make. But in very few professions are you constantly accessing rote learning. Perhaps in medicine, I suppose, where you're accessing. But then you would do your research. You would prepare for a big operation. I don't know. I just think we've lost our way slightly and the content has become more and more and more. And you've now got girls who, if they're sitting 10 GCSEs, are possibly sitting 22, 23 different papers. And more in some cases. Some exams have three papers. And I just, I'm not sure what you're gaining from that. I don't think it's an accurate assessment of what people can do. And I don't think it measures either the really important skills of life which are actually nothing to do with your knowledge. They're about your self-awareness, your self-belief, you know, all the, your self-esteem, I suppose. Those things are far more important. And I think the exam system can actually do great damage to some of those things. And what does that mean for you as a leader? Because you are leading an independent girl's school where presumably many of your families are buying into good results for their children at the end. I mean, do you think that's why families come to you? Or do you think they're looking for something wider? I hope they're looking for something wider because that's what we're trying to provide. And I think for us, it's about knowing that the girls will achieve those results almost as a byproduct of what we do for them, which is the greatest indicator of exam success is confidence. And the higher achieving students in exams that actually, one of the biggest indicators about autonomy and whether you feel like you own that exam result. And that's what we try and do for the girls. So although they will get great results, you know, they do get exceptional results. I like to think that they get more than those exam results because at the end of the day, everyone in an independent sector is going to come out with good exam results. What we want is for them to also come out with this sense of who they are and where they're going. That's the most important thing really. So what does success look like for your girls then? You know, how do you know that you've done a good job? So it gets to results day and they perhaps finished their career with you and maybe they're holding a clutch of great results in exams. But what else would you hope that they're going away with? Well, I hope they have a sense of self. That's for me, the most important thing. So for us, it's about knowing who they are as an individual. I hope they're proud of themselves. And I think that that pride looks different for every girl. So some girls might need straight nines in their GCSEs or A star, A star, A star to feel that pride because that's what they're judging themselves against. And others, like I said earlier, they might just need that grade in that one subject they've really tried hard in. And sometimes it's not their passion project. Sometimes it's, I don't know, they've really struggled in physics and they've had to work hard to overcome all the difficulties in physics to get that seven that they really, really wanted. And it might not even be their highest grade that they come out with, but they've worked hard for it so they're proud of it. And beyond the exam results, I'd like to think that they leave us knowing that they are okay. Because that's fundamentally what's going to get them through life is actually a sense that they, who they are, as a young woman when they leave us, is okay and that it's, there isn't a right or wrong for who they are. It's about them having a self-assuredness that they, that who they are is okay. And I know that sounds, it's a difficult thing but you can tell, you just can tell when someone is confident in their own skin, knows who they are. And confidence doesn't have to look like confidence in the kind of traditional sense of the word. Confidence doesn't mean they can speak in public and they can, I don't know, do a great piece of English literature or something like that. It's about, it's confidence for me and what we try and develop at the school is that they themselves have confidence in them, in who they are. And we do a lot to get to that point, but most of it is about not trying to develop a type, not trying to, to tell them who to be but actually letting them find that out by themselves. And so one of the things I'm most proud about and one of the reasons I wanted to be head of the school is because the girls just go off in a variety of directions. That there isn't a, you know, you must go to Oxbridge or you must be a vet or a doctor. Many of them will choose to do that and that's great but we'll also have girls who go off to be artists or sculptures or physiotherapists or they really want to be an event manager and they found this great course and it's become their passion project. You know, and some girls that don't go to university because they found an amazing apprenticeship and that's where they want to go and for me it's just about them knowing that and having the confidence to pursue that. And how do you instill that kind of, that confidence, that sense of self, that autonomy and independence? I think it has to start right from the time that they join us. So, and I'm talking about right the way down into nursery whenever I speak about joining us because we have girls who join us at three but it's about choices. It's about them being able to make choices confidently and then to actually accept and reflect upon the consequences of those choices because often they'll make the wrong choices. That's what being a child is about. I'm still making wrong choices and I'm faulty. But as long as I can reflect on those choices and actually take ownership of them and that's what we try to teach them. So it's trying to give them a lot of choice and you know when they come in in year seven they start making those choices. We have a kaleidoscope program. They get to choose which ones of those units they pursue. They get to choose what their language is going to be that they pursue and then they have to reflect on that. They have to think about what they've learned from kaleidoscope. Are they going to actually carry on with the taekwondo that they took up? Or have they learned that actually? Self-defense maybe not for them but it is for another girl who chose it. And that choice and that guidance comes through all the way. So we do guidance meetings with them all the way through one to one and that's about them being able to express who they are. I think a lot of it's about them finding their own voice as well. I think girls in particular can be quite wary about speaking or having their voice heard. A lot of girls don't like the sound of their own voice. And so we give them a lot of opportunities to talk in lessons, a lot of debate, a lot of group work so that they're expressing themselves, their views all the way through. And that's the only way that you can learn who you are is by listening to the things that you actually say. I think sometimes that's a really hard thing to do and it's really, I still find it hard now but it's even harder at 10 years old or 11 years old. And it becomes particularly difficult around sort of 14, 15 years old I think when you really hit kind of peak teen. And so we just have to persist with that level of autonomy I suppose over the choices that they make. We have, I think probably more choices than most schools so we have an open option system for example at GCSE. So the girls can choose the subjects they want to pursue. They have to think about what their strengths are. We go through a process of analysis. What are you good at? Why, what skills are those subjects using that are your great skills, the things that are going to make you a success in the future? And for some girls that will be doing GCSEs in art, music, drama, DT. And for other girls that's going to be doing triple science, computing, you know and a bit of extra coding on the side because they want to go in that direction but there isn't a right or wrong at our school so. And do you find that the girls do make choices quite freely or do you have to work hard to kind of ensure that they are tapping into what might be considered more sort of traditionally masculine subjects as well? I think they make very free choices because there are no boys. That I think removes an incredible amount of scrutiny or what are perceived scrutiny. So we have, you know, when we look at our options subjects at GCSE and at A level, we have really high uptake for subjects which would normally be traditionally male dominated, I would say, so physics, computing, the sciences, maths, further maths, things that are traditionally associated with boys. The girls will choose here because they are free to do so and there isn't that, there isn't the judgment coming, you know, we tell the girls they can do what they want, they can be who they want. In spite of, I suppose, expectations which I think are lessening anyway actually. Certainly since I was at school, you know, when I was at school girls did English literature potentially history and were very much kind of pushed down the humanities route and now that doesn't, you know, that doesn't happen and I think it doesn't happen at our school primarily because girls can be who they are without the need to have to impress boys or worry about boys or worry about teachers' judgments of what they should be doing and I think when parents have chosen an all-girls school that is a real driver. That's the main, you know, if I had to think about why and obviously I've chosen it for my own daughter and the reason is because I don't want her to be constrained and hemmed in by expectations of her and I have no idea where she'll go or what she'll do, she doesn't either and that's also fine, you know, and just because we're allowing girls to make decisions all the way through doesn't mean that they're always going to know what direction they're going to take and a lot of them don't decide until they're in year 13 and that's fine as well but it, yeah, it comes down to just not having a type not having an idea, a fixed idea of a mould of a girl that you want to produce at the end and I think I've seen schools where that is the case and I think I went to a school where that was the case whereby there was just, you know, you will do this, you will get these results then you will go to this university and these are the careers that are sort of open to you. Our careers advice which I think is a really big part of the independence that we teach is all about what's right for you, not what's right for us as a school That's interesting and did your own school experience that you kind of alluded to that, has that influenced you as a head? I think everything about my childhood has influenced me as a head but yeah, definitely that is, I mean I, the biggest thing that's influenced me as a head I think is actually my own parents my parents gave me a lot of choice and autonomy and that I wouldn't be in this job, I wouldn't be who I am if they hadn't given me that autonomy now obviously as they also gave me very firm boundaries which I think is another thing that's very important but I went to a girls grammar school one of the best girls grammar schools in the country and I was deeply unhappy there because I was feeling that I was being pushed into maths and you know history and English and my passion was in drama and music and business studies as well a little bit and then it got to year nine and I had the opportunity to apply to the Brit school which is where I ended up in year 10 and my parents had to decide at that point between the school that I won't name which I was at which was obviously kind of very, very high exam results, amazing things and the Brit school which was at that point two years old and the GCSE results were 11% A to C and I remember that my mum said to me well you know this is going to affect the rest of your life so if you can come up with the pros and cons if you can talk to us about you know why you want to go there versus what might be the negative things she wanted me to show that I was aware of what might the downfalls be and how was I therefore going to avoid the downfalls and I remember sitting with her and my dad and I think 13 probably because I must have been because I was in year nine and talking to them through these are the positive things that could come out of it but these are the negative things that I'm totally aware of and how I'm going to get past those is this, this and this and I can remember actually even what the sheet of paper looked like and they let me which I think was a big leap of faith for them at the time but by doing that, by having that faith in me to go there I believe that meant I got higher GCSE results than I ever would have got in the grammar school better A levels than I ever would have got in the grammar school and more than that I got a sense of my own ownership of my destiny which I think is really important so yes it does influence how I am as a head because I think that choice is so important and then the fact that you fundamentally have ownership of that choice and therefore the outcomes are you're doing really and for you to deal with Yeah I guess you probably had something quite big to prove by making that leap across to the British school and you enjoyed your time there? I loved it, yeah it was like suddenly discovering who I was and again that is something that I think has influenced me because I felt for the first three years of my senior education I wasn't who I was, I was who the school wanted me to be and to a certain extent who my parents thought they wanted me to be as well maybe and then you go to a school where there's no uniform where the teachers are called by their first names at the time I think it's probably changed now where you're in a really small environment as well and that's really important because at the grammar school I was in a year group of kind of 200 or you know 100 I think there were six forms of 30 so probably 180 and then to go to a school where you're in a class of you're in a year group of 47 and you're you're therefore known and and everything about your experience just changes because you can be see you can see the head in the corridor and they'll call you by your first name and that there's an accountability that comes with that which I which I like to have at Sutton because I like the girls to know that if they've got an idea they can come to me but equally if I hear that you know maybe they've they've done something silly or you know that I'm going to hear about it and that the size of the school means that I'll talk to them about that and I might see them in the corridor and we'll have a chat about you know something that they suggested that's come to fruition that's really exciting but equally they therefore know and it very rarely happens actually that that if something goes wrong or if they decide not to have our values at heart and to be kind to and courteous and behave well that I'm going to find out about that in the same way that I found out about their amazing idea and the great thing that they did you know so I so those things influenced me the fact that I was known is really important and the fact that I could suddenly discover who I was through my clothes and make awful decisions about clothes and so some of the things I've done as head I suppose are reflective of that so we had a sixth form dress code when I took over I took that away because I really feel strongly that in the sixth form is your chance to make those mistakes dye your hair you know rainbow colours and realise that you can't go back to blonde from orange and you know all those things that I learned because I was at a school that didn't have uniform and to express who you are through through those clothes and I so that's maybe a small way it's influenced me but that's part of independence as well because you have to you have to make those mistakes independence comes through I think self-awareness of the decisions we make How important do you think that just picking up on that kind of idea of uniform how important is uniform because your school has a very strict uniform as lots of dependent schools do and yeah having just one of my daughters moving from one GDST school to another like the the cost and the amount and the length of items needed is huge but is that an important part of your girls like sense of belonging and then how does it feel when they step out of that into the independence and sixth form without that uniform yeah I think that's where the balance comes so for me the reason the uniform is so important in PrEP and lower down in the senior school is that sense of community and belonging and we've we've added some freedoms in there as well so if the girls want to wear trousers they can wear trousers a lot of them are now wearing trousers that's something else I did when I started was to introduce the trousers not to ask for the ones I could have been mean but I went for the plain navy but it it also means that there's not that thought about what am I going to wear what am I going to you know how am I going to wear it do I have to worry about kind of what someone's going to think of my my dress code and all that sort of stuff I think you're more ready to to make those decisions when you're 16, 17, 18 and and not and not worry you've got the confidence then not to worry about it I think at 11 or you know as as your daughters are at sort of 910 you're more wary about what others are going to think of you so just removing that worry you know even with the small amount of choice that they have I think there's still that worry and I would like that to not be there but I think it just is as a product of our society that we that people feel judged on what they wear and how do your girls choose to dress in in the sixth woman do you get kind of wild and wacky stuff or do they tend to conform and create their own sort of non-uniform uniform they are all totally individual I think when when you first remove a dress code the natural worry or the worry from staff I suppose was will they wear appropriate clothing so you know will they will they be I don't know wearing a bikini to school or you know wearing their pajamas and that was kind of not what happened at all so I think there's a comfort that comes with the clothes that you wear and when you're having to wear a business suit which is what they they were wearing before you don't have that that comfort of I've chosen these clothes they are me they're representative of me and for most of the girls that is jogging bottoms and a t-shirt to be honest that's what a lot of them wear but then for other girls that bright colorful prints that they've really you know or secondhand stuff they've got from a charity shop they're really proud of because it's you know something they've got as a bargain we've seen a lot of hair changing color which I think as I say is a good thing they always find it strange that I used to have red hair like dyed red hair um and I and I think you then you then learn from from those what you from those decisions you take about your appearance so they they've taken those decisions and like I say they might have to live with as I had to live with when I tried to go from red back to blonde the fact that my hair went orange you know bright orange yellow and I couldn't get couldn't get rid of it and I had to live with that and I there are some horrific photos of me at my uncle's wedding with them what can only be described as Cindy Lauper yellow which I try and tell the girls it's far too much of a retro reference for them to even understand who Cindy Lauper is so yeah I think in going back to your question the the prep uniform and the lower down the school uniform is really important for them to feel part of the community and that's you know when we're out on school trips or when when they see each other you know but how they wear that uniform is always going to be different because how they are is different so we're not we're not incredibly stripped on that so some of you know there are choices there about are they going to wear tights are they going to wear socks are they going to wear cardigan are they going to wear a jumper they're going to wear their summer dress are they not there are some choices there but fundamentally that tartan and that the colors of the uniform is our identity as a school and it's purple which is great and it's my favorite color so I'm definitely okay with it it's quite funny because when I was when I've always grown up near the school and I always used to say to my parents that's where I want to be that's where I want to work because I love purple so much yeah be honest has that influenced your decision to lead at that school um yeah maybe how does having a background as kind of drama so you spent many years as a as a drama teacher does that influence how you lead um I think it does because I think what drama teaches you and I'm a real advocate of arts teaching not just drama but creative arts is is about the self and self expression and soft skills what used to be cool I mean people still use the expression soft skills for me they're not soft skills they're the hardest skills to actually develop um and so that influences what I want the girls to to learn I and you know when I do assemblies or when I have a chance to speak to the girls as a whole it will be about those soft skills it will be about collaboration it will be about self expression and awareness and the things that I think you get from drama which I think you can get from every subject actually if they're taught right yeah and that's why we when we report on girls when we assess them we're always looking at those skills so we give them marks on their collaboration you know on their focus on their ability to work as a team on their ability to listen to other people's ideas and develop them and it's those skills that are most sought after in the workplace problem solving collaboration innovation having ideas and being able to bring them to fruition being flexible being adaptable those things I learned through drama but I totally accept that girls learn them through through any other you know subject as well one of the great things about our school when I when I go around and look in lessons which I do a lot is I see that in other subjects so I was I see amazing debates happening in RS I see girls really passionately debating equations in physics and and I didn't learn them through through those subjects because they weren't my passion so I was really not very good at physics actually and we'll always regret my B in my GCSE but I you know I learned those things through drama but I think as a school if we can focus on those skills and we do across the whole curriculum then girls will learn them in the subjects that they're they're most interested in and will there be an important role for the creative arts as you look at how the school responds in the next stage of you know return to some kind of normality post lockdown and I mean I think for me during lockdown the most magical evening that I spent in lockdown and I will remember it forever actually was the virtual concert which we the first virtual concert that we had and the fact that so many girls had contributed to that concert and were watching that concert and parents were watching it and grandparents were watching it and then we had another two so we had a practical one and another online concert as well for the senior school it was really I mean it comes back to what I said at the start that the things that they've done in lockdown that have made me proud is the creativity and that doesn't necessarily cut like I say it can be in a wrap song about physics equations it doesn't have to be performance-based creativity there's been some amazing artwork produced there's been some really creative responses to questions in philosophy in in RS so that creativity it has to be what what drives us forward I think when we come out of this because that's what they've shown in drones that's what they've that's what the girls have exhibited that they're good at that they love and it's I set an Easter challenge over the Easter holiday and I said that we would have an exhibition of lockdown work that they'd created and some of the work that's come into me has just been absolutely amazing so yeah I think there's I think it will have a really important role to play obviously there are going to be limitations on some of it because you're not allowed to singing groups of more than 15 and you're not allowed to you know do practical drama where you share a script and we'll have to work through some of those limitations but the bit that I think girls have missed and that is very difficult to replicate is collaboration and communication in that in that collaborative sense so a lot of what we'll do in September we'll be about trying to bring that back debates talking expression that sort of thing which you can you can have on Microsoft Teams but with a delay and with people speaking over each other it's much harder to kind of navigate through that so I think that we as teachers then went towards more kind of independent autonomous learning rather than that collaboration because it was it's very hard to navigate that on on Zoom or Teams so we'll get back to that. And when you return in September how will you kind of you know lead people through a time when presumably there's lots of worry about expectations and covering the curriculum and you know there's lots of different challenges to juggle there aren't there and what's your kind of plan there? I think I've had two mantras which I've repeated throughout the whole of lockdown and I think I will adopt them for for life actually but the first one is you can only do your best and I'm a really firm believer in that that's why when we when we judge girls when we assess them when we mark them it's about them it's about their expectations and expectations of their best potential and that's the same for everybody you know teachers can only do their best I can only do my best as head I'm very open I say to the girls and I say to the staff a lot I make a lot of mistakes I'm not going to get this right all the time I'm going to make you know things like not putting a break in for people to go to the loo the start of this that's my mistake and I have to own that and say well I didn't think about it you know I'm sorry I'll do better and all you can do is keep trying and and trying to do your best so that will be the first thing that I say to them in September the girls and the staff and I think there are going to be different levels of what that looks like so what one girl's best is is a very different thing to what another girl's best is and and the other thing that I've said to everyone from day one is you know we just take each day as it comes and and we still don't know what September will really look like and it could change it could change the day before we go back you know we could have a local lockdown in Sutton and not be able to go in so I think I've learned and for me that's been a really big life lesson because like I said at the start a reason I went into Hedget was about strategic planning and I love that whole kind of let's think about where we'll be in five years time in ten years time and you know in a year's time and you can't even really think about that at the moment so um so you can continue to think about values driven strategies and where you want to feel and how you want to feel that day but you can't really plan too far ahead um tell me more about values driven strategy I love that idea well I think another thing that I always say and I think is really important in our school is what what is best for the girls how can we help the girls here um and I think Anne who I work with in the prep school she has that mentality too and that's why we get on so well we you know everything is about what's best for the girls um and sometimes that can be to the detriment of the staff and sometimes that's a problem that I then have to balance out um I think a values driven strategy is about how you want people to feel in your school and how you want people to feel on a day-to-day basis and how you want people to feel you know in a year's time and and I try and think about that and I think my drama training has helped me with that because it's all about emotion and empathy and feelings rather than end results I suppose so I think that what we've done over the past year is think about courage truth and joy as the values that hold us together um and how people then feel those things how do people feel joy in a lockdown well maybe it's through a bingo game online you know maybe we can think about silly ideas like that so a lot of the things we were doing for joy were actually probably silly ideas or what I would call fun you know just for fun's sake and that's okay too um if it drives that value of joy if it drives people feeling joy in some way um and I think sometimes people are very caught up on strategy being you know in five years time X number of girls will have A stars in their geography A level or you know in five years time we'll have seven rooms which have been refurnished or things like that but for me it's about in in five years time how will the girls feel about their school experience how will they remember what they experienced with us will they look back fondly will they will they think I remember that great time when you know we did something silly or we splattered the teachers or we I think fun has a really big part to play in school when I think back to school I don't I certainly don't think about sitting an example I think about the really fun things you know courage truth and joy is that what you want your people to feel or is it important for staff and families to feel that too I think it's everyone I think it has to be if you're if you're going to have a values strategy and a values driven school which I believe we are then it has to be everyone and those three words you know they came they're over a hundred years old they came from our school motto I didn't invent them and I think sometimes parents think that I did but all I did was translate the Latin and loosely translate it as well in the middle in the middle word but um I I think they are as relevant now as they were a hundred years ago and I believe they're kind of universals they're going to be relevant in 100 years they're going to be relevant in five years they're going to be relevant in our school in every school for girls for women and I think they're fundamentally key components of a successful life if you if you're not you know if you have a bravery a boldness about you a courage about yourself and you're not afraid to face failure or face challenges that's always going to help you if you're true to who you are and you have a sense of who that is and you're okay with that that's always going to help you and if you can try and find the positivity or just I I say to the girl sometimes it can just be sparks of joy so for me it's like trying to bank up the times when a girl holds a door open for me or the times when my dog you know is so happy to see me after a really bad day it's the small parts of joy if you can find those you just are going to have a more resilient emotional literacy than you know you're you're going to be happier which I think happy is a really I prefer joy to happiness because I think happiness has these connotations of we have to feel it all the time we have to be always happy and that's unrealistic that's never going to happen no school is always happy you're going to go through ups and downs no girl is always going to be happy you're going to go through ups and downs but joy is kind of a a thing that you can have in your and this is going to sound really pretentious I suppose but I think joy is something you can have in glimpses and in sparks and and it's therefore just in you if you can tap into it happiness is a pressure whereas joy is just something you can't help I think if it's there maybe yeah and do you try and use those values to kind of influence how you lead so I guess what what am I asking instead of being a sort of safe leader do you try and take bold and brave decisions that might not always have a certain outcome yeah and we have to and we have to take risks otherwise you know if you if you my mum said this to me when I was young if you always do what you've always done you'll always get what you've always get what you've always had sorry and I so therefore you know I think it's I think it's everyone's always moving forward schools are not you know I cannot stand where they are they have to move forward all the time you only move forward when you take risks and that's I think in every in every business in every place in every person you only you only move forward as a person or as an organisation if you take bold decisions and take risks and some of those things are not going to be popular so you know and and some of them and some of them are not going to work that's that's the other thing is you have to you have to go okay well I've taken this risk and you have to be the person that says it hasn't worked actually I've made a mistake there I've made a bad as a leader I think that's your ultimate responsibility is to some people and I've seen this happen and I've probably been guilty of it myself as well when you know in middle leadership I suppose is you you have an idea you you push it through you bring it to fruition and it isn't working and you're not evaluating it you're not reflective enough to go well actually that's we need to stop that it's not okay and you can be so caught up in your own idea that you push it forward so for me I it's about being bold but then being bold enough to go I may not have got that right I need to step back and either change it or adapt it or just give it up all together and I will keep keep trying to do that I suppose I think it's brilliant leadership to do that both in terms of role modeling for staff and for students as well though isn't it and I think it also can mean that the whole community can feel that they're able to kind of influence and shape what's happening and it's not just sort of dictated what would you if we kind of fast forwarded five years what would you like to have achieved how would you like things to feel and have you got any kind of exciting plans bubbling away of what you'd hope to achieve in those sort of first five years of headship I think I had all those plans about six months ago now as I was actually about the day ahead I think I was I was saying to the girls actually in my end of end of year assembly that my biggest achievement this year was when the year 13 when they were leaving which again we had to rush through on the last day because we didn't we suddenly realized it was going to be their last their last assembly they did an impersonation of me where they in the in a song which they'd written which was amazing and brilliant and they they said they they basically impersonated me and they said courage truth and joy girls and I suppose that's I see that as a success because I think if if those values can be truly embedded and that takes time it takes you know and it and it's silly things like we some of the ideas that my leadership team come up with is about sparking that joy so we were thinking you know how how awful it must be for girls to go around these open mornings uh countless open mornings for schools and so before lockdown we were thinking okay well we're going to get bean bags and they could sit on bean bags and you know the front and their parents can sit behind them and that will just make it more relaxed and sure it's it's when you start leading with those things I think at the moment they're there um and they're definitely felt and they're definitely aspired to but in five years time I would hope they were just embedded that you know that our staff were bold and brave with things that they're doing and taking risks in their teaching and the girls were accepting those risks and challenges and really open to them um and that we we were a school that was filled with joy and I think we're there but we're not as there as we can be and I'm interested as well in how your school is sort of perceived because at a time and I might have got this wrong so correct me if I have but at a time when lots of families are facing challenge and that being able to send their children to a fee paying school might be more difficult for many my understanding is actually that you've had more people wanting to come to your school is that right yeah so we're growing which is amazing um and I I I don't know why I think the answer is about parents becoming more aware of well-being and the power that that has to drive a child's achievement in and not just in an exam factory way but in a in a and I talk about holistic achievement but you know the sense of success for a girl is more than exams but those come as part of what we do so it it's difficult to kind of take them off but I think that's why we're growing I feel that that's why we're growing when when I speak to parents when I meet parents at open days um I don't talk about exam results I talk about best outcomes for girls and for me that's more than exams and we're a we're a really mixed school cohort as well and I think that is attractive it's much more representative of the world we're incredibly diverse in our school um we are not a school that is you know overly traditional overly restrictive I think we're very free um but we also have boundaries which again you know is important so I I would like to think it's I would like to think that society is becoming more aware of children's well-being being an absolutely key part of their success far more than exam results so that's what I would like to think is I'm very keen that when a girl comes to us she comes to us and she she she takes a journey and it you know obviously being in a borough with grammar schools and being um in a grand in a in a borough with lots of competitors I suppose and with really good state schools as well um that journey might not be three to eighteen but I hope it would be because I think that's when we know the girls the best is when they've been with us and they've taken a journey to become who who they actually are and they've developed that self-assuredness to be that person um and to own it to really own who they are I think is is really important and it's taken me I you know a very long I don't think I don't I think that's a continual journey and the reason it's a continual journey is because you're continually evolving as a person so you you have to get used to yourself many many times um but I hope that I hope that when girls join us they become they start to become the individual that they are whilst also being part of a family which is just lovely yeah well that's that's really you know I haven't spoken about kindness but kindness is is the key to everything so that's everything about our school is about kindness and that's what I look for in staff I say to staff when they come to interview I'm not looking at your university degree that's not important to me what's important to me is will you be kind to my girls will you treat them with kindness because that's when they'll they'll do their best so yeah wow what thought would you like to to leave people with oh gosh very profound I suppose that when girls feel better they do better so that when that if you can encourage your daughter or any girl that you come into contact with to feel okay about who she is she will be successful that's how we empower girls to do well