On 28 November, we were fortunate to welcome the GDST's Director of Innovation and Insight, Dr Kevin Stannard, to the Senior School, to give a talk on the advantages of an education designed specifically for girls.  

Dr Stannard began by asking whether we need separate educational provision for girls in a world where girls have equal opportunity to access education at all levels and increasingly dominate in higher education; and where single sex schools are in a clear minority.  The answer was a resounding yes. Perhaps things would be different if girls’ schools were protective bubbles shielding fragile females from the ‘real world’, and if the ‘real world’ was truly gender equal - but as the GDST Girls’ Futures Report proves, we are nowhere near this. Gathered from a nationally representative sample of more than 1,350 girls, the data was sobering - girls scored poorly on every measure of confidence, including their views of the world and their likely place within it; they do not have much faith in the equality of opportunity that will be open to them in future; they feel negative about the future; they often avoid hobbies, activities, and subjects on account of gender.  

The data provides reasons for hope: girls at GDST schools buck many of these trends, scoring much higher than their female counterparts and often much more in line with boys. Dr Stannard identified a 'GDST Junior School Effect', where girls are able to build a reservoir of resilience, in part protection against the ebb of confidence in the teenage years, which is more marked in girls; and they also retain their confidence in the Sixth Form years. 

Summing up all the pieces in the jigsaw of the research available into girls'-only schools, Dr Stannard concluded that: