Head's Blog

I wonder if you have a lucky mascot. Maybe it’s a cuddly toy, a crystal or even a special pair of lucky socks? It seems even the students on University Challenge have mascots for their teams, perhaps hedging their bets that if everything else fails, then maybe ‘lady luck’ can be harnessed to their benefit. 

I remember thinking the same as I approached my A Levels, and for each exam had my lucky gemstone perched on the desk in front of me. I repeated this during my PhD viva where I had to defend my thesis on urban river engineering and showcased my knowledge to a panel of academic experts. However, let me say now, it was not wholly reliable. 

It is not luck that will help us achieve our goals but diligence grounded in self-discipline which is the ‘mother of good luck’. This means that if you work carefully and constantly you are far more likely to be successful, as if luck had come your way. In fact, self-discipline is often missing in discussions of the drivers of success, overshadowed by intelligence, natural abilities, hard work, personal connections and luck. Yet, self-discipline – the practice of continually pursuing an objective despite the effort required, the obstacles to overcome and the temptations to pursue a less difficult target – is often the single critical influence in ultimate outcomes.

Some years ago, I attended a lecture by Dr Christopher O’Neill, founder of the MYRIAD research project (https://myriadproject.org) in Oxford University which investigates resilience and wellbeing in young people. Dr O’Neill is a psychologist, registered psychotherapist and trained counsellor and he has 40 years’ experience of working with students and staff in schools. He made it clear that outstanding achievement is not so much down to genes, teachers or parents (although these factors can play a part), but down to ‘YOU’!

So, what can ‘you’ do if we are to believe that there are a number of important factors leading to outstanding achievement which, unlike our genetic profile, are entirely under our control. Dr O’Neill identified four factors which can tip ‘luck’ in our favour – 

• Putting in the hours… perspiration! Edison famously said ‘Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration’. In other words, focused, sustained and deliberate work or practice is essential for everyone to achieve well. This ties in neatly with Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers, which claims that 10,000 hours of intensive, deliberate practice is necessary to gain mastery of a complex skill or subject like playing violin or excelling at computer programming. 
• Self-discipline… the superpower of self control! Stanford scientist, Walter Mischel, famously set pre-school children the ‘marshmallow test’ to see if they could defer the gratification of eating one marshmallow for 15 minutes, in order to win two. It turns out the ability to defer gratification is the single best predictor for later achieving better grades at school, earning higher salaries and being more healthy. 
• A growth mindset… In other words, belief that achievement is a result of deliberate effort as opposed to a fixed mindset, where you believe that you are born with fixed abilities and therefore effort has little effect. The power of ‘yet’… I can’t do it ‘yet’. Having a growth mindset is about the belief that someone can learn and improve.
• Finding your inspiration to keep you going! Motivation is like launching a rocket before it can take off. That means seeking out what inspires us, setting goals, and taking encouragement from those who offer it. 

So, there you have it, the best advice for all those who wish to succeed in school and in life generally. I should also highlight that many incorrectly equate “willpower” with self-discipline. Willpower — the ability to say “no” to temptation — is a synonym for self-control. On the other hand, self-discipline is learned, structured, well thought out and consistent. It is strengthened through practice. My message here is simple: self-discipline is essential for paving our road to success. It equips us with the battle gear for resisting temptation and winning at everything we do. Our intellectual dispositions at Northampton High, namely, collaboration, curiosity, independence, perseverance and risk taking are embedded in our bespoke curriculum and will most certainly support our young people to flourish in a changing world. 

Does how we think about other people have an effect on them? Do our views, whether expressed out loud to those individuals or not, have an impact? Is it possible that we have the power to make people kinder or less kind, more or less trustworthy, more or less likely to achieve academic success, simply because of our view of them?

Gandhi is often quoted as saying “be the change you wish to see in the world”. But this is a reductive paraphrasing of his actual words:

“We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do”.

Contained within these words and the ideas expressed is the possibility that how we approach others, our way of being, might be powerful enough to change the ways of others. Gandhi describes that we human beings perceive the world through the filters we impose ourselves. If we want to see a different reality, we need to work on our filtering, and the world will change. Well, probably not the world as a whole immediately, but definitely the way we perceive the world around us. Often you cannot convince someone via speech alone to constructively alter a behaviour, but you can provide a model for emulation by changing your own behaviour.

In the last T-search session ably led by Mrs Debbie Hill, our GDST Trust Consultant Teacher for Educational Research and School Consultant Teacher, we explored the power of the Pygmalion Effect in the classroom and the labelling theory. Our discussion was initially centred around one of the best known experiments conducted by psychologist, Bob Rosenthal, at Spruce Elementary School in South San Francisco, where he split a group of students into those labelled as having high potential and those with low potential. The students were assigned at random and there was no factual basis for the group they were placed into but the adults teaching the students were unaware of this, believing the assigned label. The experiment showed that where teachers had high expectations of their students – believing that the group had excellent academic potential – the students made far greater progress on average than the group of students who had been artificially labelled as having low academic potential. As this famous study demonstrates, the expectations that teachers have of their students are influential in their future academic performance and the challenge for teachers is to find ways to release and unlock the student’s potential, capacity and self belief.

This became known as the Pygmalion Effect – the idea that belief (or lack of) in someone’s potential has a direct correlation with how well they perform. And it’s not just the expectations of teachers that matter. Where there is the will to believe such as where managers have high expectations of workers there is increased productivity, where there are positive expectations of nurses this can lead to patients recovering faster. So, what can schools do to ensure high teacher expectations?

Research has demonstrated that providing educators with information about the impact of high expectations is a good starting point for improvements to be made. When teachers expect students to do well and show intellectual growth, they do; when teachers do not have such expectations, performance and growth are not encouraged and may in fact be discouraged in a variety of ways. My message here is that there is something about the belief held by another which changes their interaction with another individual, bringing about the differences noted time and again in research. When students feel that their teacher cares about their success and is willing to help them achieve their goals, they are more likely to put in the effort needed to meet those expectations.

There is, of course, a scary flip side to the Pygmalion Effect called the Golem Effect: low expectations leading to poorer outcomes. Fortunately, the empirical research in this area is much scarcer due to ethical objections. However, it is not entirely lacking and one infamous example was an experiment which saw a number of orphans split into two groups. One group was told they were excellent speakers, while the other group were told they were likely to develop a stutter. Even though there was no foundation for these statements, multiple individuals in the latter group had their speech negatively impacted for life. This is an example of a self-fulfilling prophecy – an idea that self-held beliefs can come true in reality. When a low performance is noted, the negative expectations are confirmed and the belief is reinforced.

So, we see the Pygmalion Effect in some children, and the Golem Effect in others. Students we don’t expect enough from miss out on teacher input, leading to lowered school performance. This confirms and perpetuates these low expectations, even with no reliable basis in the first place. It’s a vicious cycle. It may seem obvious, but the best way to overcome the Golem Effect is to use the Pygmalion Effect. Remember: the best way to help people to achieve and perform well is to believe that they can do so. If we believe the very best of people, if we imagine them to be kinder and more trustworthy, maybe they will be.

Both the Golem and Pygmalion effect manifest in educational settings and beyond. It is important to recognise and acknowledge that these may be occurring in your day-to-day life, as it can result in consequences beyond the academic realm. Could our belief in our students actually lead to them performing better, playing sport better or achieving more? I certainly don’t think we have got anything to lose, as a school, by living our mantra ‘we believe in our girls, and they believe in themselves’. By believing that every Northampton High girl has the capacity to learn and improve, and by supplementing this with strategies such as focusing on process and mastery, we can ensure that no child is ever left behind.

Sources: 

1. Hester de Boer, Anneke C. Timmermans & Margaretha P. C. van der Werf (2018) The effects of teacher expectation interventions on teachers’ expectations and student achievement: narrative review and meta-analysis, Educational Research and Evaluation, 24:3-5, 180-200.
2. Rosenthal, R, and L. Jacobsen (1968) Pygmalion in the classroom: teacher expectation and pupils’ intellectual development. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
3. Animated video about the Pygmalion Effect. The Pygmalion Effect

For the new school video that our brilliant marketing team is putting together, I was asked many interesting and challenging questions and one of them was ‘Snap my finger to change one thing in the world’. My answer to this question is ‘I would make everyone kind. It costs nothing to be charitable and makes you more friends than enemies!’. My message here is ‘if you can be anything in life be kind’. The great thing is that it isn’t difficult to be kind. As the Dalai Lama said, ‘Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible’. 

At Northampton High, I often come across two distinct ways in which kindness manifests itself. Firstly, and perhaps most frequently, in showing kindness to others. For example, old-fashioned good manners are the norm – you are greeted with smiling pupils who hold open doors, make eye contact, and engage in conversation. Secondly, and much less consistently, in showing kindness to ourselves.

The focus for Children’s Mental Health Week, 6-12 February 2023, is ‘Let’s connect – connecting with others in healthy, rewarding and meaningful ways to support our mental health’. Our wellbeing team has devised an ingenious way for us to celebrate the week and staff have been asked to write kindness notes anonymously to students, and for Year 7 and 8 students to do the same for our Junior School pupils. Kindness causes elevated levels of dopamine in the brain, helping us feel happier. Therefore, a little act of kindness can arguably go a long way in making someone feel valued, appreciated, and connected, which is an essential strategy for whole school wellbeing and mental health. 

A survey published by NHS Digital in 2021 highlighted that one in six children have a diagnosable mental health issue and the likelihood that mental health issues would be identified as a probable disorder increased with age, with young women aged 17 to 22 being most at risk. It pointed out that many young people have found it very challenging to negotiate the milestones of leaving school or home, starting work or study or looking for jobs in very different circumstances. Therefore, it’s really important to help each other out when we can, and to find ways to take care of our minds. One very simple but powerful way to connect with others is through kindness.

Acts of kindness can make a real difference, but the point is not to be known for your good deeds but to do a little something for someone else to make the world a slightly nicer place in that moment. It’s a life philosophy which centres on radiating human kindness and gratitude. My message here is simple: when we ourselves perform an act of kindness, this is likely to encourage others to act in a similar way. Being treated with kindness can have an enduring and endearing impact so let’s not overlook this simplest of words – let’s value this most important human trait and all make a little more effort to act with kindness towards one another. 

Many scientific papers have shown that kindness and giving to charity stimulates activity in brain regions associated with pleasure and reward. Doing good reduces stress levels and leads, when it becomes a habit, to long-term improvements in the life satisfaction of those who do good deeds. A recent study published in The Journal of Positive Psychology, showed that acts of kindness can be better than therapy for people suffering depression, by comparison with those undergoing a particular form of CBT and those asked to take part in social activities. Dr David Cregg of Ohio State University, who led the study, said: “Social connection is one of the ingredients of life most strongly associated with wellbeing. Performing acts of kindness seems to be one of the best ways to promote those connections.”

In closing, doing good does you good. It is important to look out for each other in and around our communities, and that includes here at Northampton High. My hope is for everyone to keep an eye out for an opportunity to help someone with a random act of kindness or hold onto that warm feeling when someone helps you. 

It would be wrong of me not to end this blog with the most enormous THANK YOU to all who support us: our pupils who are so keen to make a difference, our staff who always go the extra mile, and all the parents and alumnae who have given so generously in so many ways – through financial support, through your advice, through your contacts, through your time and through your spirit. Thank you! You are the best school community in the country, of that I am certain.

Dr May Lee
Head

References:

NHS Digital (2021): ‘Mental Health of Children and Young People in England 2021’. Available at: Mental Health of Children and Young People in England 2021 – wave 2 follow up to the 2017 survey

Cregg, D.R and Cheavens, J.S (2022) Jennifer S. Cheavens. Healing through helping: an experimental investigation of kindness, social activities, and reappraisal as well-being interventions. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 1 Available at: 10.1080/17439760.2022.2154695

How long does it take to sail around the world? And why did the wrong answer to this question have a profound effect on human history? 

There is a reason to pose this question, and questions like it, right now. At the beginning of term, we launched our Reach lectures and already this new initiative has proven to enliven and animate study for our Year 9 to Sixth Form students. Our students learn to ask hard questions, distrust easy answers, and think for themselves. The lectures are led by our brilliant teachers from the Senior School, exploring their array of expertise and subject specialisms. These range from Maths in Music to Elon Musk’s brain machine interface technology to leadership in sport and life lessons from the ancient world. Although there is a wide range of topics available, the idea is always the same: intriguing questions, surprising answers, and higher-level creative thought. 

Fun, sparky, challenging, rewarding and memorable, the Reach lectures are a world of learning and enquiry beyond the confines of any curriculum. Each and every lecture celebrates learning for its own sake and explores the space between subjects and space far beyond them. Above all it encapsulates the joy and individuality at the heart of human intelligence. This is further exemplified by my weekly learning walk, where I can see, feel, and witness our teachers explore a subject in more depth, let a student discussion run, take on a challenging topic for the sheer fun of what it can teach us, they are naturally living the High School approach wheel. Intellectual character dispositions such as curiosity, risk taking, and independence happen here every day.

So – how long does it take to sail around the world? Well, this answer is fairly easy – it depends on your boat and the weather. The Magellan-Elcano circumnavigation in 1519 took three years. Just over five years ago, François Gabart, a single-handed sailor, set the record by completing it in a shade under 41 days – as verified by the World Sailing Speed Record Council.

The second question, why the wrong answer matters, is where it gets interesting. When Christopher Columbus set sail, neither he nor any of his sailors had any fears about falling off the edge of the world, because they, like more or less everyone in human history, knew that it was round (the reason why many modern people believe our ancestors thought it was flat is another interesting question of its own). However, Columbus was wildly optimistic about how far round it was.

The history of science is littered with glorious discoveries, but also inglorious error. One of the great pieces of scientific calculation, the measurement of the circumference of the Earth by Eratosthenes of Cyrene in around 240 BCE, was a lovely example of error and luck. Eratosthenes made two major errors in his calculations, but happily they cancelled each other out, and his answer was remarkably accurate: 39,375 km vs the modern measure of 40,076 km.

However, to err is human. One great early map-maker, Ptolemy, got his own sums wrong, or miscopied a figure, and he put the circumference of the world at less than 30,000 km. Columbus was in part emboldened by this number to think he could sail all the way around the world to China. If he hadn’t been armed with this naïve confidence he may not have set off – and the whole chain of discovery, exploration, colonialism, exploitation and more may have happened in a very different way. 

Another example is the Leaning Tower of Pisa. When it was built, it was undoubtedly intended to stand vertical. It took about 200 years to complete, but by the time the third floor was added, the poor foundations and loose subsoil had allowed it to sink on one side. Along with the unexpected failure of the foundations is the unexpected consequence of the tower becoming a popular tourist attraction, bringing enormous revenue to the town. It is therefore important to note that unintended consequences can sometimes be positive.

There is a whole history out there of the unintended consequences of various mistakes. As many know, the glue on Post-Its was designed to stick not unpeel. We try, we fail, and every time we learn. Sometimes we get lucky and succeed without meaning to. Fast, unreflective thinking works where events are repetitive and predictable, as is most of what we encounter daily. It doesn’t work so well, though, when problems are novel, complex or abstract.

So my message here is simple. We want all our students at Northampton High to practise their curiosity every day at school and in their wider lives. Never stop asking why and how: never stop wondering, always be willing to challenge the status quo with open-minded, deep questioning. Curiosity is a human instinct but like most instincts, it can be refined through observation and practice. For example think-aloud while reading a book, watching a Ted Talk, or even having a conversation. As long as you can ‘pause’ to ‘think out loud’, you can explain how and what and why you are thinking what you are thinking, questions you have, things that pique your interest – and most crucially, the courage to follow that curiosity wherever it takes you.

To that end, we want our Reach lectures and all the other stretch and challenge activities to open doors for our students into realms of curiosity that they can explore without knowing where they will lead. And above all, we want them to explore boldly, fearlessly and embrace mistakes. We always learn from them, and we never know where they might lead us – and lead the world.

It is interesting how often we can gain insight into something of wider significance from things that happen in our daily life. It occurred to me recently that there is a lot of debate (and I will stick with the word ‘debate’ rather than ‘argument’) in our house – most of which takes place between my husband and me. We come at things from very different angles, grew up in completely different households, made our way through the education system in different ways and truthfully, don’t even agree on which political party to vote for.

Now this might sound like a recipe for disaster but nothing could be further from the truth. I have often thought how fortunate I am to have someone in my life with such a contrasting set of views: I am forced to argue (I mean ‘debate’!) what I think and believe in a more intelligent way; occasionally my views are changed; and, frequently, I am encouraged to look at things from a perspective that would not otherwise have presented itself to me. Recently, reading Matthew Syed’s book – Rebel Ideas – I have become even more convinced about the powerful outcomes that engaging with diversity of thought and experience can have both on the individual and within teams and organisations.

At the GSA Heads’ conference that I attended last term, Matthew Syed, writer, speaker and broadcaster, was the keynote speaker and he talked about the need for cognitive diversity on leadership teams. Women, who are woefully underrepresented in C-Suites, bring a different perspective which is much needed in the decision-making process. He also made the point that people who want to be perfect will never take risks:“if your self-esteem is bound up in your performance, you cannot contemplate failure”. He suggested that our aim should be to ensure that our students take rational, calculated risks at the right times, as pilots do in a simulator. I love the idea that our classrooms might be like flight simulators, where learners practise their skills again and again, improving them every time. 

The most challenging and wicked problems that our world is facing right now are enormously complex from climate change to terrorism. Even a century ago, a mere moment in the history of our planet, the issues we faced were simpler and more linear. In the areas of science and engineering, the response to the challenges this complexity presents is to bring together teams of people. Syed explains how diversity within these teams can give them the edge and enable them to become much more than the sum of their parts. He highlights how teams that have “collective intelligence” can solve complex problems, like designing a new product or tackling climate change. Complex problems are often multi-layered and therefore require multiple insights and points of view. 

He is not necessarily talking about the demographic/identity diversity that includes gender, race, age, religion, sexuality but instead the importance and value of cognitive diversity – ‘difference in perspective, insights, experiences and thinking styles’. For some complex problems demographic/identity diversity may provide the cognitive diversity he describes, but in others it will not.

Syed’s book provides detailed real-world illustrations of where cognitive diversity (or the lack of it) had a significant impact. He gives a fascinating analysis showing how the CIA, despite having formidable intelligence, was unable to identify Bin Laden as a credible threat because they didn’t recognise that in his communications to the world he was using imagery from the Koran to deliver a potent message. Instead, they saw him and his followers as an ‘anti modern, uneducated rabble’.  Syed describes our blind spots – our inability to fully understand certain problems because we cannot know what we don’t know. More people, with more diverse experiences in life, are less likely to share the same blind spots, thus allowing us to look at a problem through different lenses that can jog new insights, metaphors and solutions. 

Syed goes on to describe how teams with relevant but varied expertise blend broader working knowledge that might produce a more elegant, innovative and viable solution to a problem. The inspiration for his book was his own invitation in 2016 to join a hugely varied team on the Football Association’s Technical Advisory Board. The group contained a British Asian founder of high tech start-ups, a leading educationalist, the former head coach of the England rugby team, and the first female college commander at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst amongst others. Not a lot of football expertise…but huge cognitive variety.  I will let you decide whether they might have had a positive impact if you reflect back on England’s World Cup performance. 

At Northampton High we have been exploring the concept of turning ‘Can We’ into ‘We Can’ which we use to describe the way that our community is made more by the membership of every individual. To allow our whole community to achieve its full potential, we must create space for the variety of views, experiences and insights that surely exist amongst us. By sharing opinions, being open to different points of view, listening with respect, and learning to articulate our own views clearly, we can all contribute to and benefit from Northampton High being greater than the sum of its parts. 

At a time of doom and gloom, Syed’s book serves as a lovely reminder of the importance and uniqueness of humanity – and how we collaborate and connect for the greater good. 

Reference: Matthew Syed, Rebel Ideas: The Power of Diverse Thinking, 2019. John Murray Press

As teachers, we often expect students to take risks, to think outside the box, to stand up and read out their work, to have a go even if it’s wrong. We mark their work but always with an emphasis on what they could do to improve, because we know it will help them to develop a growth mindset and grow academically, emotionally, and reflectively. We tell them, as I often do with my Year 10 Geography class, that it is ‘okay to make mistakes’, ‘we learn best from the mistakes we make’, that they should just ‘have a go’. This is acceptable and encouraged in the classroom. 

But what about those occasions when you feel motivated to do something, but fear is getting in the way? There is nothing unusual about feeling trepidation when approaching a challenge. Sometimes, for all of us, it can feel that our courage is not as strong as our fear, and we falter. At our recent open events here at Northampton High, I often explain that the one thing I want for all our pupils is for them to develop the confidence to operate outside their comfort zones and feel completely comfortable in their own skin. If they only do the things they already know they can succeed at, they will never find the edges of their brilliance. However, I understand telling people to face their fears and push outside their comfort zones is easy – how you put this into practice is trickier. 

This brings me to a blog that I read from Laura Mclnerney, an education journalist and former teacher, and one simple idea jumped out as something we could all embrace. Knowing that it is normal to be afraid in situations where you feel out of your depth, just try to be 10% braver. This is quite a commonly quoted idea in the world of education and widely used across the WomenEd sector, but it is actually a very practical suggestion. If you are facing something that you are finding a struggle or that you are afraid of doing, ask yourself whether you would do that thing if you were 10% braver. If you think you would, then just go ahead and do it. If you think that you probably would not do it, even if you were 10% braver, then maybe your reservations are more justified, and you can consider the next steps again.

The theme for my first assembly was about being 10% braver, where I urged every one of us to put ourselves in a vulnerable position where we are not the expert in the room and to embrace that feeling. Who knows where it will take us? My leap of bravery was tested recently when I attended the GDST Heads’ conference where each Head was asked to share something in just two minutes towards the trophy cabinet top up. I heard exciting initiatives from Microsoft Incubator School to Head’s Open Door lunchtime session, and by the time it was my turn to share (penultimate place), my brain froze, and I felt myself blushing and started to question my ability. What if the low cost, high impact project that I picked to share seemed too simple and childlike? As I stood in front of a group of esteemed and distinguished Heads, I could feel my voice wavering, my breath was short and wispy, and my leg was shuddering. I told them about our new inspiring installation in the Senior School reception foyer which forms part of the Neurodiversity Umbrella Project in support of the ADHD Foundation. I explained how the colourful umbrellas form an uplifting visual representation of all the different minds – red, orange, yellow, green, and blue – and the display is designed to represent the one in five of us who have a neurodevelopmental condition, such as ADHD, Autism, Dyslexia etc. For me, one of the most exciting elements of the project is the opportunity to celebrate the many strengths that come from thinking differently and to change the perception of neurodivergent people. When I finished telling ‘my trophy’ story, my head was buzzing and felt my insides turn to water. My face suffused with heat as I came to the end of my last sentence. But it was received well, and I saw some Heads scribbling down notes and others smiling intently and positively at me. I knew I had embraced the 10% braver challenge and I vowed that I needed to show the bravery and the belief in myself as the other Heads have displayed for the next session and all the future ones. But that moment of putting myself in that feeling of uncertainty opened my eyes and added a much-needed reminder about understanding what some students must feel and face each and every day. 

The idea of testing yourself with the 10% braver measure is to overcome our natural instinct to avoid possible failure. We worry about messing up and catastrophise the potential outcomes if we do something that pushes our boundaries. More often than not, if we try something and it does not work out, nothing bad will happen. So, this half term, I am encouraging us all to try and be 10% braver in what we do – who knows what brilliant outcomes we will achieve? And watch out for me next time I share another trophy story with a group of Heads.

Most schools and many institutions lay claim to a set of values. At their worst, these can be absurd: well-meaning or virtue-signalling boasts that bear no apparent relation to the actual business in which the organisation is engaged. Even the most ambitious of schools might feel it a little superficial and specious to include ambition among the terms that define them. 

And yet values do matter: in part because the choice of them is revealing in itself; but mostly insofar as they are lived qualities, rather than empty words – principles that guide choices, inform thoughts, and govern actions; by which all of us in school may judge ourselves and be held accountable. 

At Northampton High School, we embody the four GDST values: We always put girls first. We are forward-thinking. We are fearless. And we are a family of schools. What makes the combination powerful is the tension between them. To be forward-thinking and to be fearless may be separate imperatives and reconciling them may indeed require us to unite as a family and put girls first. As a set of principles, they are active, not passive. What I admire in the values of the GDST is that they present a harsher dilemma. The choice between them is seldom clear-cut, and the balance is for each individual to strike and to filter in and filter out choices based on values. 

A prime example is the challenge we have set ourselves to improve in the area of diversity, inclusion, and real change through the GDST’s Undivided Charter for Action. The discussions this involves are tough and sensitive. If we are to be forward-thinking and fearless, we must address squarely those times we have excluded others and failed to live up to the standards we set ourselves. If we are to be undivided in our commitment to putting our girls first and in our sense of family, where every individual is valued, respected, and included, we must do that with generosity and consideration, both require us to be brave. 

Most of all our values present us with a quiet, simple, overwhelming challenge: to test and verify every decision we make in their light. Words themselves, and the choices they imply, always matter, whether they are painted on the sides of buses or uttered as vows; but the actions they prompt are what define us. We want every Northampton High student to leave us knowing that they are confident to show what they can do, fearless to face up to every dilemma, and have a forward-thinking approach to trust their own abilities and choose the path that winds, no matter how tortuously, towards the common good. Our school mantra, we believe in our girls, and they believe in themselves, may just inch just a little closer – to the benefit of us all and for our school to set off as a beacon of inspiration and aspiration. 

Values are extracted, lived, and felt – not scripted. They come from what is shared and often unwritten; they create identity and belonging; and, together, they change minds and act as a compass.

Dr May Lee
Head

At the beginning or the summer term 1878, at the height of Queen Victoria’s reign, the doors of 83 Abington Street, Northampton were opened to twenty-nine pupils with the intention of providing them with ‘a thorough and systematic English Education at a moderate cost’. 

The school, initially advertised two-months earlier as “Northampton Middle-Class Girls’ School” and which was later to become “Northampton High School for Girls” was born just five years after what was to become the Girls’ Day School Trust (GDST), of which the school is now a member and at a hugely important time in changing the way in which young women were educated.

By the spring of 1879, just one year after opening, the school was renamed “The Clevedon School – A Church High School for Girls”, the ‘High’ fashionably emphasising that the school offered more than just an elementary education, and fees were 12 shillings per term for the under 12s and 28 shillings for the over 12s. 

By the end of 1881, the school had its third Headmistress (just) in the shape of Miss Waldron, her predecessor having been in post for just one month. An early leader but one of many, including Miss Alice Straker, who led the school for 21 years from December 1890, introducing the motto ‘‘The Utmost for the Highest”, and overseeing the name change to “Northampton High School for Girls” in 1898.

Miss Elizabeth Mary Wallace served as Headmistress from the autumn of 1912 and was the first of its leaders to hold the equivalent of an honours degree. She found new premises that would meet the requirements of the Board of Education and the school relocated to Castillian House, at the corner of Castillian Street and Derngate, for 5 years from 1914. 

School photo – 1925

Prince of Wales visit, 1927

Miss Wallace oversaw the school’s Golden Jubilee celebrations in 1928 and on speech day, which was attended by H.R.H Princess Mary (later Princess Royal), and just one year after a visit from the Prince of Wales, she laid out her vision:

“I have dreamed of many things that I have wanted for our school: I am a dreamer of dreams and a seer of visions; perhaps they are practical ones, or there is some magic in the school, for one by one they are being realised. When I first knew the school, it had no garden; and although we were about to lose even the building, I dreamed of a fair and spacious garden for it. Today, in the very heart of the town, we have a delightful home with beautiful grounds and a fine view over open country…” – Miss Wallace, December 1928

This period brought new opportunities for women, and Miss Wallace wasn’t the only woman to benefit from the opportunity to pursue in-depth study via Higher Education. In a year that had seen all women in Britain gain equal voting rights with men, she added in her Jubilee speech that “the fight for equal opportunities for women and for men has been won: our girls have entered into a noble heritage, and men of vision help the work forward. The girls have won their freedom: we pray that they may use it nobly and well in the service of mankind.”

Science laboratory, 1930

1933 saw celebrations of a different type as the school celebrated Miss Wallace’s 21 years as headmistress. Old Girls provided a cake with twenty one candles and presented her with a gold watch. In turn, she presented the school with a striking clock, which stood in the front hall at 44 Derngate until 1992, when the school moved to its current site. The clock currently stands in the Edward Cripps Room (ECR), adjacent to the Senior School library.

As Miss Wallace finally said goodbye to the school and a job that had been her life on 28 July 1937, and leaving a substantial sum of money for the scholarship fund, the school had almost 200 pupils; by the time her successor, Miss Marsden (a Mathematics graduate from Westfield College, London) left, there were over 700.

The war years may have seen sandbags in the cloakrooms and regular ‘shelter’ practice for the girls but they were, thankfully, relatively untouched by the happenings in Europe and by the middle period events such as Sports Days and Open Days had resumed with the former seeing intense rivalry between the four houses (then St. Monica’s, St. Hilda’s, St. Elizabeth’s and St. Cecelia’s).

Over the next few years, the Governors purchased Towerfield in Derngate for the Junior School (1941) and Spring Hill in Cliftonville was bought (1947), allowing the school to be reorganised into three distinct sections: Spring Hill (girls from 3 to 9); Towerfield (girls from 9 to 11) and Main School (girls from 11 to 19). In the midst of this, the 1944 Education Act awarded Direct Grant Status, allowing free places for girls, should they reach the required academic standard. 

1941 – Towerfield

This Act, written 16 years after Miss Wallace’s comment that “the fight for equal opportunities for women and for men has been won”, also enabled female teachers to retain their teaching position after marriage for the first time. Despite this, it would be another 44 years before the school appointed its first married headteacher, Mrs Linda Mayne.

Much of the building work and purchasing of school buildings over the following few years, including the Assembly Hall, Gymnasium and Library (1957) and 68 Derngate, was down to the generosity of the Cripps family, known for their philanthropic philosophy and the structure of the main school was feasible due to further benefaction from Mr Humphrey Cripps, (later Sir Humphrey). As such, the building was named in his honour.

The Cripps Block, 1958

At Speech Day in 1986, the then-Head, Miss Lightburne announced that an anonymous donor had purchased a considerable number of acres of land in Hardingstone to build a complete new school, to house all the girls from the ages of 3 to 18 on the same site, together with a purpose-built sports complex. This was an amazing gift that turned out to be yet another from the Cripps Foundation and planning permission to begin the build was granted in March 1987. Sir Humphrey Cripps’ son, Mr Edward Cripps, was appointed to oversee the project.

Aerial photo of Hardingstone site

Artist’s impression of Main Foyer, Hardingstone site      

By January 1990, The Sports Complex on the new Hardingstone site was opened and girls were able to travel there to use the facilities for eight terms before the classrooms were ready for a permanent move on 8 September 1992. One month later, the site was officially opened by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and 15 years later we joined the GDST (Girls’ Day School Trust).

The Queen formally opening the Hardingstone site on 16 October 1992.

2007 – The High School joined the Girls’ Day School Trust (GDST)

The school may have seen many changes over the years, but the strong sense of community and of loyalty has never waivered and we are fortunate to have an incredibly strong alumnae network. Indeed, the OGA (Old Girls and Associates of Northampton High School) which encompasses a wider group and is currently under the leadership of Mrs Carolyn White, ex-teacher and parent at the school, is thriving. With regular newsletters and an annual lunch, those who have experienced the spirit of Northampton High School – be it at in Derngate, Hardingtone, as a member of the wider GDST or not – are able to share their particular memories of their time at Northampton High School and contemplate the effect that those years have had on their relationships and their lives in the years since.

OGA reunion lunch, January 2020

Readling the history of the High School, it could be argued that we are currently experiencing the most disrupted period ever, but we are creating our own history here and now, and will talk about ‘the COVID months’ for years to come. So many have been adversely affected by the current pandemic, but the sense of community, cohesion and camaraderie is as strong as ever and we know that we will pull through this period together.

Happy 143rd birthday, Northampton High School, and here’s to being able celebrate in person very soon!

Caroline Petryszak
Headmistress 

 

Over the past few days, several events have come together that have caused me to focus on the school that we are: our school librarian’s recommendation of ‘Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men’, by Caroline Criado Perez, discussions around our response to Black Lives Matter and my virtual attendance at the Girls’ Schools Association (GSA) Conference, 2020.

Criado Perez’s book covers a wide variety of issues relating to the theme of gender bias or, perhaps – more accurately – data bias, and it is a fascinating read. In it, she addresses issues from government policy and medical research, to technology, workplaces, urban planning and the media, but a theme she refers to again and again is the influence of lack of role models on girls’ self-perception and learning. This includes ‘brilliance bias’ through which she explains that by the age of six girls have often started to doubt their gender and quoting a 2017 paper on the subject:

‘A recent US study found that when girls start primary school at the age of five, they are as likely as five-year-old boys to think women could be ‘really, really smart’. But by the time they turn six, something changes. They start doubting their gender.’

Much of this she links to leadership, stating that many girls go on to view female lecturers as less qualified than their male counterparts, despite the reality, and the huge sexist bias that remains. She also states that ‘job vacancies are still often announced with masculine forms – particularly if they are for leadership roles’ and that (only) ‘27% of CEOs in the US are female, but women made up only 11% of the Google Image search results’. Relevant to our children’s ‘education’, too, she states that ‘only 13% of non-human children’s TV characters are female and of children’s films released between 1990 and 2005, 72% of speaking roles went to male characters’. And, more importantly, of failures in the curriculum: the first being the 2015 campaign by an A Level student who noticed that, ‘of the sixty-three set works included in her music syllabus, not a single one was by a woman’ and the other Michael Gove’s 2013 national History curriculum that saw an ‘almost wholesale absence of women’.

Given the above – the ‘brilliance bias’, ill-designed curricula and a disproportionately low number of female role models, particularly in leadership positions, it is not surprising that Criado Perez writes that ‘a powerful woman is seen as a norm violation’.

Inspired by her book and associated research, I took some time to explore the facts about female leadership in schools and, although the figures are now several months old, this research is still representative today.

These figures tell us that, of 221,000 teachers employed in state-funded primary schools 34,100 are men and 187,000 are women, a ratio of 1:5.5, yet there are 4,500 male heads and 12,300 female heads, a ratio of 1:2.7 – almost half the proportion. Put another way, if you are a man working in a state-funded primary school, you are twice as likely to be a head as your female counterpart; in a secondary school, you are almost three times as likely to be so. Of the (relatively few) female heads that are in post, a shocking 96.6% in state schools are of white ethnicity. This reflects, in part, recruitment to the profession, but it is also a misrepresentative statistic in its own right. And let’s not forget the zeitgeist that is the gender pay gap…

My research went well beyond these headlines, but the outcome was still the same, and that is that women leaders are still well behind men, even in the 21st century, both within my own profession and beyond.

As she opened the GSA conference this week, Jane Prescott – Head of Portsmouth High School, Girls’ Day School Trust (GDST) and Chair of GSA – spoke of strong female role models who have demonstrated tremendous leadership over recent months, including Angela Merkel, Erna Solberg and Jacinda Arden. When asked “Do you think girls in schools have been inspired by female leaders around the world, whether this has given them confidence and whether empathy has been seen to be a strength?”, Jane concurred.

Speaking later in the conference, Cheryl Giovannoni, CEO of the GDST, quoted Hillary Clinton’s concession speech of 2008 in which she acknowledged that Barack Obama was the clear nominee for the Democratic Party, stating that “although we weren’t able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you, it’s got about 18 million cracks in it and the light is shining through like never before, filling us all with the hope and the sure knowledge that the path will be a little easier next time.” This is a woman whom Criado-Perez reminds us was seen, in the 2016 US presidential election, as ‘too ambitious’ to many, yet Cheryl reminded us of the fact that she displays many of the characteristics that we teach our girls every day: to be fearless, to get up, dust themselves off and carry on, and to believe in themselves and never give up on their dreams.

As members of the GDST family of schools and the GSA network we have no shortage of inspirational role models: in the GDST alone we have over 70,000 alumnae, many of whom are willing to give their time and knowledge to current students through initiatives such as the Rungway mentoring app and GDST Life.

Criado Perez’s quotes on the failures in the curriculum with regard to the absence of women are now a few years’ old and, although some progress has been made, more can be, too. Now, though, we are all rightly focusing on Diversity and Inclusion, Black Lives Matter and the associated curricula. As an independent school we have the gift to change the curriculum for all our students and we are working to do so through conversation with pupils, parents and staff. As members of the GDST and its ‘UNDIVIDED’ commitment to diversity, inclusion and real change, we can do even more.

I could not be more proud than to be leading one of the GDST family’s schools and to be a part of the wider GSA network, and particularly at this difficult time. I fully believe that our students have all of the inspiration, collaboration and support that they need to excel in life, and to eventually allow that light to beam through the place where that ‘glass ceiling’ once stood…